Abstract
Recently we have theoretically shown the feasibility of generating ultrashort (near- or sub-femtosecond) nonoscillating pulses of high intensity.1,2 Those "superpulses," capable of strongly exciting or ionizing an atomic system within the time much shorter than any characteristic time of the system, would open a new chapter in nonlinear optics and atomic and molecular physics, both as a new probing tool and a source of new effects. Available HCPs3 (~0.4 ps long, with ~200 kV/cm amplitude) could be approximated as superpulses in ionization of highly excited Rydberg atoms. Superpulses capable of ionizing a single low-lying atomic eigenstate would produce new, essentially quantum effects.4 One such effect is multiple ionization "echoes": We theoretically show here that photoelectrons born in (unipolar) superpulse ionization will be emitted in both forward and backward directions in several, well-separated in space and time bunches.
© 1997 Optical Society of America
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