Asymmetric structure of atomic above-threshold ionization spectrum in two-color elliptically polarized laser fields*

Abstract

According to the frequency-domain theory, we investigate the asymmetric structure of above-threshold ionization (ATI) spectrum of an atom in two-color elliptically polarized (EP) laser fields. When both laser fields are linearly polarized (LP), the spectrum shows that the multi-plateau structure is symmetric about the emitted angle of electron at π/2, while the spectrum becomes asymmetric and shifts rightwards with the increase of the EP degree of the IR laser field. Since the total ATI process is regarded as including direct ATI and the rescattering ATI, we analyze the spectrum structure of direct ATI and rescattering ATI separately. Using the saddle-point approximation, we find that for direct ATI, the fringes on the spectrum are mainly attributed to the fact that the ionization probability becomes very small when the direction of emitted electrons is perpendicular to the direction of the XUV laser polarization; while for the rescattering ATI, the interference fringes on the spectrum mainly come from the superposition of the waist structures on the spectra of all sub-channels.