Abstract

The recent demonstration, [1] of the feasibility of using high-order harmonics of an infrared laser, as a coherent and pulsed (soft-) X-ray source, opens new perspectives in inner-shell spectroscopy. Among these new perspectives, we wish to address the possibility to conveniently perform two-colour experiments involving final atomic states lying into the continuum, namely Laser-Assisted Single-Photon Ionization (LASPI). It implies that the ionization process results from the absorption of one high-frequency photon together with the simultaneous exchange of one or several laser photons. The observation of a similar process, namely laser-assisted Auger transitions, has been also recently reported, [2].

© 1994 Optical Society of America