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Abstract
We perform ab initio calculations on the total ionization probability of diatomic molecules in strong laser fields as a function of alignment angle, the angle between the laser polarization and the molecular axis, with the goal of investigating whether these ionization maps can be used to determine the orbital symmetry of the initial state. We find that the ionization rate for each alignment angle is highly dependent on the pulse intensity and duration and, because of this dependence, the orbital symmetry can only be determined with the appropriate pulse parameters. The pulse length and intensity need to be chosen in such a way as to avoid excessive ionization, or significant population of other bound states. We also observe that the internuclear separation of the molecule strongly affects the mapping of the orbital symmetries.
Acknowledgements
We are thankful to Oliver Hijano for helpful discussions and technical help on some of the simulations. We acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation through its Consolider Program Science (SAUUL CSD 2007-00013), Plan Nacional (FIS2008-06368-C02-01/02), as well as AGAUR 2009-SGR-341, LASERLAB-EUROPE, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/D07309X/1), and the NSF under Grant No. PHYS-0968799. E.H. acknowledges support from Fundación Caja Madrid.