Two-photon excitation of hydrogen atom by sub-femtoseconds electromagnetic pulses

Abstract

The development of methods of generation of ultrashort pulses (USP) of femto- and attosecond duration ranges with controlled parameters necessitates the theoretical study of features of their interaction with a matter. Among such features that do not exist in case of “long” pulses should first of all be the nonlinear dependence of the photoprocess probability W on the USP duration as well as the dependence on the carrier phase with respect to the pulse envelope. It should be noted that if the dependence of the probability W on the phase manifests itself either only for very short pulses, when ωt < 1 (w is carrier frequency of the pulse, t its duration), or in case of a nonlinear photoprocess, the function W(t) can differ from a linear function in the limit ωt > 1 too for fields of moderate strength, when the perturbation theory is applicable. The present work is dedicated to the theoretical analysis of two-photon excitation of hydrogen atom in a discrete energy spectrum by ultrashort electromagnetic pulses of femto- and subfemtosecond ranges of durations. As examples, excitation of hydrogen atom from the ground state to excited states with a zero orbital moment is considered.