Dynamical phase evolution of Coulomb-focused electrons in strong-field ionization probed by a standing light wave
Atomic Physics
2025-09-17 v1
Abstract
We investigate the dynamical phase evolution of Coulomb-focused electrons in strong-field ionization. We diffract the electrons with an ultrashort standing light wave to track their time-dependent phase. Our findings show that low-energy electrons exhibit a unique chromosome-shaped diffraction pattern, distinct from higher-energy electrons. Our numerical model quantitatively reproduces the experimental results, confirming this pattern maps the electron's time-dependent phase evolution as it escapes from a Coulomb potential. Our pulsed diffraction grating technique offers a new way to sense an electron's quantum phase without interfering its release mechanism.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.12820,
title = {Dynamical phase evolution of Coulomb-focused electrons in strong-field ionization probed by a standing light wave},
author = {Yuan Gu and Hao Liang and Weiran Zheng and Aofan Lin and Jiaye Zhang and Zichen Li and Juan Du and Lei Ying and Peilun He and Jan-Michael Rost and Sina Jacob and Maksim Kunitski and Till Jahnke and Sebastian Eckart and Kang Lin and Reinhard Dörner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.12820},
year = {2025}
}