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arXiv · 2609.35283

Reconstructing Molecular-Ion Quantum States with Two-Color Strong-Field Scattering

Dina S. Eissa·Felipe Morales·Abraham Camacho Garibay·Vyacheslav Leshchenko·Cosmin I. Blaga·Misha Ivanov·Pierre Agostini·Maria Richter·Louis F. DiMauro
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Abstract

Strong-field ionization of molecules can prepare coherent superpositions of ionic states whose amplitudes and relative phases govern the ensuing ultrafast dynamics, but accessing this information experimentally remains a challenge. Here we introduce two-color strong-field scattering, in which a strong mid-infrared field ionizes the molecule and launches an electron, while a weak second harmonic field resonantly couples vibronic states of the parent ion during the electron's continuum excursion, thereby introducing structural changes on the sub-laser-cycle timescale. Scanning the relative phase between the two colors controls the ionic evolution and maps it onto phase-dependent sub-angstrom bond-length changes retrieved from the rescattering signal. Using the example of N$_2$, we apply the two-color setup to probe the coherence between different ionization channels and to reconstruct the initial ionic superposition. Our results establish two-color strong-field scattering as a powerful structural approach to characterize the complex amplitudes of ion quantum wavepackets.

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Dina S. Eissa, Felipe Morales, Abraham Camacho Garibay, Vyacheslav Leshchenko, Cosmin I. Blaga, Misha Ivanov, Pierre Agostini, Maria Richter, Louis F. DiMauro. 2026-09-28. Reconstructing Molecular-Ion Quantum States with Two-Color Strong-Field Scattering. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35283

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