Holographic interference in atomic photoionization from a semiclassical standpoint

Abstract

A theoretical study of the interference pattern imprinted on the doubly differential momentum distribution of the photoelectron due to atomic ionization induced by a short laser pulse is developed from a semiclassical standpoint. We use the semiclassical two-step model of Shvetsov-Shilovski et al. [Phys. Rev. A 94, 013415 (2016)2469-992610.1103/PhysRevA.94.013415] to elucidate the nature of the holographic structure. Three different types of trajectories are characterized during the ionization process by a single-cycle pulse with three different types of interferences. We show that the holographic interference arises from the ionization yield only during the first half cycle of the pulse, whereas the coherent superposition of electron trajectories during the first half cycle and the second half cycle gives rise to two other kinds of intracycle interference. Although the picture of interference of a reference beam and a signal beam is adequate, we show that our results for the formation of the holographic pattern agree with the glory rescattering theory of Xia et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 143201 (2018)10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.143201]. We probe the two-step semiclassical model by comparing it to the numerical results of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation.