Anomalous strong-field ionization of oxygen

Description

This item was taken from the IEEE Conference ' Anomalous strong-field ionization of oxygen ' Unlike atoms, simple tunneling models for the ionization rates of molecules by strong laser fields often do not agree with experimental data, indicating either a lack of understanding of tunneling ionization or new physics. The latter explanation has been invoked to use the observed low ionisation rate of O/sub 2/ as evidence for dissociative recombination in strong laser fields. While we can show, with new data, that dissociative recombination is not a significant effect for O/sub 2/ we can also show, with a new molecular model, that tunneling ionization also cannot explain the measured rates. This implies that there are still more new phenomena in the strong-field behavior of molecules.