Strong-field photoelectron momentum imaging of OCS at finely resolved incident intensities

Abstract

Abstract Photoelectron momentum distributions from strong-field ionization of carbonyl sulfide with 800 nm central-wavelength laser pulses at various peak intensities from 4.6 to 13 × 1013 W cm−2 were recorded and analyzed regarding resonant Rydberg states and photoelectron orbital angular momentum. The evaluation of the differentials of the momentum distributions with respect to the peak intensity highly suppressed the impact of focal volume averaging and allowed for the unambiguous recognition of Freeman resonances. As a result, previously made assignments of photoelectron lines could be reassigned. An earlier reported empirical rule, which relates the initial state's orbital momentum and the minimum photon expense to ionize an ac Stark shifted atomic system to the observable dominant photoelectron orbital momentum, was confirmed for the molecular target.