Tunneling delay time in strong field ionization of atomic Ar

Abstract

“Attoclock” provides a promising experimental scheme to explore the timing of tunnel ionization of atoms and molecules in intense laser fields. In this work, we perform a systematical investigation of tunneling delay time in strong field ionization of atomic Ar, based on the “attoclock” experimental scheme. Experimentally, the laser intensity dependence of the photoelectron momentum distributions of Ar subject to strong elliptically polarized laser fields at 800 nm has been measured. Theoretically, a dedicated semiclassical model, in which the Coulomb potential effect, the nonadiabatic effect, the Stark effect, the multielectron screening and polarization effect have been well considered, is employed to simulate the ionization dynamics of Ar. By comparing the experimental and simulated results, an upper limit of 10 attoseconds for the tunneling delay time of Ar has been derived for the laser intensity ranges explored in this work. In addition, the influence of various physical effects on the extracted tunneling delay time, in the context of semiclassical model, has been analyzed. It is demonstrated that, under otherwise identical conditions, consideration of multielectron screening effect will give rise to the least change of the extracted tunneling delay time. In contrast, consideration of nonadiabatic effect will lead to the most significant change of the extracted tunneling delay time.