Resolving Rydberg-Electron Recapture Dynamics via Laser-driven Frustrated Tunneling Ionization
Abstract
By employing two-color counter-rotating circularly polarized laser fields, we investigate the dynamics of electron recapture into Rydberg states under strong, ultrashort laser pulses, probed via coherent extreme-ultraviolet free-induction decay (XFID). Our study reveals significant distinctions between XFID and above-threshold high-order harmonic generation in terms of their ellipticity dependence on the driving-laser waveforms, yield variations with the laser-intensity ratios, and sensitivity to the driving-laser ellipticity. All these differences arise from the fundamentally distinct electron trajectories underlying the two processes. More importantly, our findings provide compelling evidence that Rydberg-electron recapture predominantly occurs at the end of the driving laser field, offering the first direct experimental confirmation of this long-proposed mechanism.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.19007,
title = {Resolving Rydberg-Electron Recapture Dynamics via Laser-driven Frustrated Tunneling Ionization},
author = {Sainan Peng and Yudong Chen and Yang Li and Guangyu Fan and Xinhua Xie and Feng He and Zhensheng Tao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.19007},
year = {2025}
}