Electron angular distributions in dissociative photoionization of the hydrogen molecule

Abstract

ABSTRACT: A method to calculate angular distributions for electrons ejected from fixed-in-space molecular hydrogen molecules subject to ultrashort intense laser pulses is proposed, based on the ab initio solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation. This method of solutions allows for a temporal picture of interferences arising in the dissociative ionization channel (in the proton kinetic energy spectrum) due to the presence of the autoionizing double excited states in the Hydrogen molecule. In particular, we show how this autoionization during the dissociative photoionization process may also induce a counterintuitive asymmetry in the angular distribution of the ionized electron with respect to nuclei inversion in spite of dealing with an homonuclear system.