Abstract

Short-pulse, high-intensity lasers are currently being used to study excitation-ionization processes in atomic gases. The electromagnetic fields reach the regime in which they equal or exceed the interatomic (Coulomb) interaction strengths, leading to strongly nonperturbative behavior in these systems. We have explicitly solved the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for an atom in a pulsed field by using a finite-difference technique to understand the dynamics of the emission processes. Both electrons and photons can be emitted during the pulse, and the time-dependent wave function provides information about the competition between these processes.

© 1993 Optical Society of America