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    Intracluster Coulombic decay following intense NIR ionization of clusters
    (Bristol : IOP Publ., 2015) Schütte, Bernd; Arbeiter, Mathias; Fennel, Thomas; Jabbari, Ghazal; Gokhberg, Kirill; Kuleff, Alexander I.; Vrakking, Marc J. J.; Rouzée, Arnaud
    We report on the observation of a novel intracluster Coulombic decay process following Rydberg atom formation in clusters ionized by intense near-infrared fields. A new decay channel emerges, in which a Rydberg atom relaxes to the ground state by transferring its excess energy to a weakly bound electron in the environment that is emitted from the cluster. We find evidence for this process in the electron spectra, where a peak close to the corresponding atomic ionization potential is observed. For Ar clusters, a decay time of 87 ps is measured, which is significantly longer than in previous time-resolved studies of interatomic Coulombic decay.
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    Correlated electronic decay following intense near-infrared ionization of clusters
    (Bristol : IOP Publ., 2015) Schütte, Bernd; Arbeiter, Mathias; Fennel, Thomas; Jabbari, Ghazal; Kuleff, Alexander I.; Vrakking, Marc J. J.; Rouzée, Arnaud
    We report on a novel correlated electronic decay process following extensive Rydberg atom formation in clusters ionized by intense near-infrared fields. A peak close to the atomic ionization potential is found in the electron kinetic energy spectrum. This new contribution is attributed to an energy transfer between two electrons, where one electron decays from a Rydberg state to the ground state and transfers its excess energy to a weakly bound cluster electron in the environment that can escape from the cluster. The process is a result of nanoplasma formation and is therefore expected to be important, whenever intense laser pulses interact with nanometer-sized particles.
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    Electron dynamics in laser-driven atoms near the continuum threshold
    (Washington, DC : OSA, 2021) Liu, Mingqing; Xu, Songpo; Hu, Shilin; Becker, Wilhelm; Quan, Wei; Liu, Xiaojun; Chen, Jing
    Strong-field ionization and Rydberg-state excitation (RSE) near the continuum threshold exhibit two phenomena that have attracted a lot of recent attention: the low-energy structure (LES) just above and frustrated tunneling ionization just below the threshold. The former becomes apparent for longer laser wavelengths, while the latter has been especially investigated in the near infrared; both have been treated as separate phenomena so far. Here we present a unified perspective based on electron trajectories, which emphasizes the very important role of the electron-ion Coulomb interaction as expected in this energy region. Namely, those trajectories that generate the LES can also be recaptured into a Rydberg state. The coherent superposition of the contributions of such trajectories with different travel times (each generating one of the various LES peaks) causes an oscillation in the intensity dependence of the RSE yield, which is especially noticeable for longer wavelengths. The theory is illustrated by RSE experiments at 1800 nm, which agree very well with the theory with respect to position and period of the oscillation. The wavelength scaling of the RSE oscillation is also discussed. Our work establishes a solid relationship between processes below and above the threshold and sheds new light on atomic dynamics driven by intense laser fields in this critical energy region.