Relativistic Tunneling Ionization in Crossed Petawatt Laser Beams

Abstract

A scheme is proposed for a two-beam experiment on multi-petawatt laser systems aimed at searching for relativistic effects in electron tunneling from deep levels of multiply charged ions. It is shown that the most efficient relativistic ionization will occur in the field of a standing wave that arises in the case of counter-propagating beams. Estimates are given showing that the observation of relativistic effects during the ionization of $$s$$-states of hydrogen-like ions with charge $$Z = 80{-} 90$$ is potentially possible at laser intensity in the beam overlap domain $$ \simeq {\kern 1pt} $$1025 W/cm2.