Isospectral Hamiltonians from Moyal products

Recently Scholtz and Geyer proposed a very efficient method to compute metric operators for non-Hermitian Hamiltonians from Moyal products. We develop these ideas further and suggest to use a more symmetrical definition for the Moyal products, because they lead to simpler differential equations. In addition, we demonstrate how to use this approach to determine the Hermitian counterpart for a Pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We illustrate our suggestions with the explicitly solvable example of the -x^4-potential and the ubiquitous harmonic oscillator in a complex cubic potential.Comment: 10 pages, to appear special issue Czech. J. Phy

Coulomb-free and Coulomb-distorted recolliding quantum orbits in photoelectron holography

We perform a detailed analysis of the different types of orbits in the Coulomb Quantum Orbit Strong-field Approximation (CQSFA), ranging from direct to those undergoing hard collisions. We show that some of them exhibit clear counterparts in the standard formulations of the strong-field approximation for direct and rescattered above-threshold ionization, and show that the standard orbit classification commonly used in Coulomb-corrected models is over-simplified. We identify several types of rescattered orbits, such as those responsible for the low-energy structures reported in the literature, and determine the momentum regions in which they occur. We also find formerly overlooked interference patterns caused by backscattered, Coulomb-corrected orbits and assess their effect on photoelectron angular distributions. These orbits improves the agreement of photoelectron angular distributions computed with the CQSFA with the outcome of ab-initio methods for high-energy phtotoelectrons perpendicular to the field-polarization axis.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figure

Multielectron corrections in molecular high-order harmonic generation for different formulations of the strong-field approximation

We make a detailed assessment of which form of the dipole operator to use in calculating high order harmonic generation within the framework of the strong field approximation, and look specifically at the role the form plays in the inclusion of multielectron effects perturbatively with regard to the contributions of the highest occupied molecular orbital. We focus on how these corrections affect the high-order harmonic spectra from aligned homonuclear and heteronuclear molecules, exemplified by $\mathrm{N}_2$ and CO, respectively, which are isoelectronic. We find that the velocity form incorrectly finds zero static dipole moment in heteronuclear molecules. In contrast, the length form of the dipole operator leads to the physically expected non-vanishing expectation value for the dipole operator in this case. Furthermore, the so called "overlap" integrals, in which the dipole matrix element is computed using wavefunctions at different centers in the molecule, are prominent in the first-order multielectron corrections for the velocity form, and should not be ignored. Finally, inclusion of the multielectron corrections has very little effect on the spectrum. This suggests that relaxation, excitation and the dynamic motion of the core are important in order to describe multielectron effects in molecular high-order high harmonic generation.Comment: Figures 2 and 4 have been simplified in order to fulfil the size requirements of arXiv; in the new version references have been adde

Excitation, two-center interference and the orbital geometry in laser-induced nonsequential double ionization of diatomic molecules

We address the influence of the molecular orbital geometry and of the molecular alignment with respect to the laser-field polarization on laser-induced nonsequential double ionization of diatomic molecules for different molecular species, namely $\mathrm{N}_2$ and $\mathrm{Li}_2$. We focus on the recollision excitation with subsequent tunneling ionization (RESI) mechanism, in which the first electron, upon return, promotes the second electron to an excited state, from where it subsequently tunnels. We show that the electron-momentum distributions exhibit interference maxima and minima due to the electron emission at spatially separated centers. We provide generalized analytical expressions for such maxima or minima, which take into account $s$ $p$ mixing and the orbital geometry. The patterns caused by the two-center interference are sharpest for vanishing alignment angle and get washed out as this parameter increases. Apart from that, there exist features due to the geometry of the lowest occupied molecular orbital (LUMO), which may be observed for a wide range of alignment angles. Such features manifest themselves as the suppression of probability density in specific momentum regions due to the shape of the LUMO wavefunction, or as an overall decrease in the RESI yield due to the presence of nodal planes.Comment: 11 pages revtex, 2 figure

Existence criteria for stabilization from the scaling behaviour of ionization probabilities

We provide a systematic derivation of the scaling behaviour of various quantities and establish in particular the scale invariance of the ionization probability. We discuss the gauge invariance of the scaling properties and the manner in which they can be exploited as consistency check in explicit analytical expressions, in perturbation theory, in the Kramers-Henneberger and Floquet approximation, in upper and lower bound estimates and fully numerical solutions of the time dependent Schroedinger equation. The scaling invariance leads to a differential equation which has to be satisfied by the ionization probability and which yields an alternative criterium for the existence of atomic bound state stabilization.Comment: 12 pages of Latex, one figur