Attosecond Control of Photoabsorption Through Manipulating the Electron--Electron Correlation

This talk reports on studies of photoabsorption control by manipulating the electron$-$electron correlation in a double-ionization process with an attosecond extreme ultraviolet (EUV) pulse. Electron correlation plays an essential role in a wide range of fundamentally important many-body phenomena in modern physics and chemistry. An example is the importance of electron--electron correlation in multiple ionization of multielectron atoms and molecules exposed to intense laser pulses. Manipulating the dynamic electron correlation in such photoinduced processes is a crucial step toward the coherent control of chemical reactions and photobiological processes. We will show for the first time, from full-dimensional \textit{ab initio} calculations of double ionization of helium in intense laser pulses ($\lambda =$ 780 nm), that the electron--electron interactions can be instantaneously tuned using a time-delayed attosecond EUV pulse.\footnote{S. X. Hu, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{111}, 123003 (2013).} Consequently, the probability of producing energetic electrons from excessive photoabsorption can be enhanced by an order of magnitude through the attosecond control of electron--electron~correlation. This work was partially supported by the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under Award No. DE-NA0001944, the University of Rochester, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Computations have been conducted utilizing the ``Kraken'' Supercomputer at NICS.