arXiv subjects

T. Jahnke

Publications and source records attributed to T. Jahnke.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Imaging the He$_2$ quantum halo state using a free electron laser

We report on coulomb explosion imaging of the wavefunction of the quantum halo system He$_2$. Each atom of this system is ionized by tunnelionization in a femto second laser pulse and in a second experiment by single photon ionization employing a free electron laser. We visualize the exponential decay of the probability density of the tunneling particle over distance for over two orders of magnitude up to an internuclear distance of 250 Å. By fitting the slope of the density in the tunneling regime we obtain a binding energy of 151.9 $\pm$ 13.3 neV, which is in agreement with most recent calculations.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2016

Electron localization in dissociating $H_2^+$ by retroaction of a photoelectron onto its source

We investigate the dissociation of $H_2^+$ into a proton and a $H^0$ after single ionization with photons of an energy close to the threshold. We find that the $p^+$ and the $H^0$ do not emerge symmetrically in case of the $H_2^+$ dissociating along the $1sσ_g$ ground state. Instead, a preference for the ejection of the $p^+$ in the direction of the escaping photoelectron can be observed. This symmetry breaking is strongest for very small electron energies. Our experiment is consistent with a recent prediction by Serov and Kheifets [Phys. Rev. A 89, 031402 (2014)]. In their model, which treats the photoelectron classically, the symmetry breaking is induced by the retroaction of the long range Coulomb potential onto the dissociating $H_2^+$.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2015

Quasi-molecular electron promotion beyond the 1s$σ$ and 2p$π$ channels in slow collisions of He$^{2+}$ and He

The electron emission pattern of transfer-ionization in collisions of He$^{2+}$ with He was investigated for impact velocities between 0.53 a.u. and 0.77 a.u. (7 keV/u - 15 keV/u) employing recoil-ion momentum spectroscopy. This process is known to be dominated by the promotion of the 2p$π$ molecular orbital into the continuum which results in "banana" shaped areas of high electron momentum densities extending from the target to the projectile in velocity space in the collision plain. Asymmetries are explained by a coherent superposition of the 2p$π$ channel of the quasi molecular promotion with the 1s$σ$ channel. Here we report on an additional contribution of higher angular momentum molecular states for close collisions which emerge at smaller impact velocities. They show up as highly structured electron emission patterns in the plane perpendicular to the direction of impact.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2015

Agreement at last: an experimental and theoretical study on the single ionization of helium by fast proton impact

Even though ion/atom-collision is a mature field of atomic physics great discrepancies between experiment and theoretical calculations are still common. Here we present experimental results with highest momentum resolution on single ionization of helium induced by 1\,MeV protons and compare these to different theoretical calculations. The overall agreement is strikingly good and already the first Born approximation yields good agreement between theory and experiment. This has been expected since several decades, but so far has not been accomplished. The influence of projectile coherence effects on the measured data is shortly discussed in line with an ongoing dispute on the existence of nodal structures in the electron angular emission distributions.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2014

Interatomic-Coulombic-decay-induced recapture of photoelectrons in helium dimers

We investigate the onset of photoionization shakeup induced interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD) in He2 at the He+*(n = 2) threshold by detecting two He+ ions in coincidence. We find this threshold to be shifted towards higher energies compared to the same threshold in the monomer. The shifted onset of ion pairs created by ICD is attributed to a recapture of the threshold photoelectron after the emission of the faster ICD electron.

physics.atm-clus↗

arXiv2014

Absolute cross sections for photoionization of Xe$^{q+}$ ions (1 $\le$ q $\le$ 5) at the 3d ionization threshold

The photon-ion merged-beams technique has been employed at the new Photon-Ion spectrometer at PETRA III (PIPE) for measuring multiple photoionization of Xe$^{q+}$ (q=1-5) ions. Total ionization cross sections have been obtained on an absolute scale for the dominant ionization reactions of the type hν+ Xe$^{q+}$ $\to$ Xe$^{r+}$ + (q-r) e$^-$ with product charge states q+2 $\le$ r $\le$ q+5. Prominent ionization features are observed in the photon-energy range 650-750 eV, which are associated with excitation or ionization of an inner-shell 3d electron. Single-configuration Dirac-Fock calculations agree quantitatively with the experimental cross sections for non-resonant photoabsorption, but fail to reproduce all details of the measured ionization resonance structures.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2014

Transfer excitation reactions in fast proton-helium collisions

Continuing previous work, we have measured the projectile scattering-angle dependency for transfer excitation of fast protons (300-1200 keV/u) colliding with helium (p+He $\rightarrow$ H + He$^{+ *}$). Our high-resolution fully differential data are accompanied by calculations, performed in the plane wave first Born approximation and the eikonal wave Born approximation. Experimentally we find a deep minimum in the differential cross section around 0.5 $mrad$. The comparison with our calculations shows that describing the scattering angle dependence of transfer exitation in fast collisions requires to go beyond the first Born approximation and in addition to use initial state wave function, which contains some degree of angular correlations.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2013

Vibrationally Resolved Decay Width of Interatomic Coulombic Decay in HeNe

We investigate the ionization of HeNe from below the He 1s3p excitation to the He ionization threshold. We observe HeNe$^+$ ions with an enhancement by more than a factor of 60 when the He side couples resonantly to the radiation field. These ions are an experimental proof of a two-center resonant photoionization mechanism predicted by Najjari et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 153002 (2010)]. Furthermore, our data provide electronic and vibrational state resolved decay widths of interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD) in HeNe dimers. We find that the ICD lifetime strongly increases with increasing vibrational state.

physics.atm-clus↗

arXiv2013

Ion impact induced Interatomic Coulombic Decay in neon and argon dimers

We investigate the contribution of Interatomic Coulombic Decay induced by ion impact in neon and argon dimers (Ne$_2$ and Ar$_2$) to the production of low energy electrons. Our experiments cover a broad range of perturbation strengths and reaction channels. We use 11.37 MeV/u S$^{14+}$, 0.125 MeV/u He$^{1+}$, 0.1625 MeV/u He$^{1+}$ and 0.150 MeV/u He$^{2+}$ as projectiles and study ionization, single and double electron transfer to the projectile as well as projectile electron loss processes. The application of a COLTRIMS reaction microscope enables us to retrieve the three-dimensional momentum vectors of the ion pairs of the fragmenting dimer into Ne$^{q+}$/Ne$^{1+}$ and Ar$^{q+}$/Ar$^{1+}$ (q = 1, 2, 3) in coincidence with at least one emitted electron.

physics.atm-clus↗

arXiv2013

2D electron momentum distributions for transfer ionization in fast proton Helium collisions

The momentum distribution of the electron in the reaction p+He $\rightarrow$ H + He$^{2+}$ + $e$ is measured for projectile energies $E_p$=300 and 630 keV/u at very small scattering angles of hydrogen. We mainly present two dimensional distributions parallel $(k_{||})$ and perpendicular $(k_{\perp})$ to the projectile beam. Theoretical calculations were carried out within the Plane Wave First Born Approximation (PWFBA), which includes both electron emission mechanisms, shake-off and sequential capture and ionization. It is shown that electron correlations in the target wave function play the most important role in the explanation of experimentally observed backward emission. Second order effects have to be involved to correctly describe the forward emission of the electron.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2013

Probing the tunneling site of electrons in strong field enhanced ionization of molecules

Molecules show a much increased multiple ionization rate in a strong laser field as compared to atoms of similar ionization energy. A widely accepted model attributes this to the action of the joint fields of the adjacent ionic core and the laser on its neighbor inside the same molecule. The underlying physical picture for the enhanced ionization is that the up-field atom that gets ionized. However, this is still debated and remains unproven. Here we report an experimental verification of this long-standing prediction. This is accomplished by probing the two-site double ionization of ArXe, where the instantaneous field direction at the moment of electron release and the emission direction of the correlated ionizing center are measured by detecting the recoil sum- and relative-momenta of the fragment ions. Our results unambiguously prove the intuitive picture of the enhanced multielectron dissociative ionization of molecules and clarify a long-standing controversy.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2013

A measurement of the evolution of Interatomic Coulombic Decay in the time domain

During the last 15 years a novel decay mechanism of excited atoms has been discovered and investigated. This so called ''Interatomic Coulombic Decay'' (ICD) involves the chemical environment of the electronically excited atom: the excitation energy is transferred (in many cases over long distances) to a neighbor of the initially excited particle usually ionizing that neighbor. It turned out that ICD is a very common decay route in nature as it occurs across van-der-Waals and hydrogen bonds. The time evolution of ICD is predicted to be highly complex, as its efficiency strongly depends on the distance of the atoms involved and this distance typically changes during the decay. Here we present the first direct measurement of the temporal evolution of ICD using a novel experimental approach.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2013

Transfer ionization and its sensitivity to the ground-state wave function

We present kinematically complete theoretical calculations and experiments for transfer ionization in H$^++$He collisions at 630 keV/u. Experiment and theory are compared on the most detailed level of fully differential cross sections in the momentum space. This allows us to unambiguously identify contributions from the shake-off and two-step-2 mechanisms of the reaction. It is shown that the simultaneous electron transfer and ionization is highly sensitive to the quality of a trial initial-state wave function.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2012

Ejection of quasi-free electron pairs from the helium atom ground state by single photon absorption

We investigate single photon double ionization (PDI) of helium at photon energies of 440 and 800 eV. We observe doubly charged ions with close to zero momentum corresponding to electrons emitted back-to-back with equal energy. These slow ions are the unique fingerprint of an elusive quasi-free PDI mechanism predicted by Amusia et al. nearly four decades years ago [J. Phys. B 8, 1248, (1975)] . It results from the non-dipole part of the electromagnetic interaction. Our experimental data are in excellent agreement with calculations performed using the convergent close coupling and time dependent close coupling methods.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2012

Multiorbital tunneling ionization of the CO molecule

We coincidently measure the molecular frame photoelectron angular distribution and the ion sum-momentum distribution of single and double ionization of CO molecules by using circularly and elliptically polarized femtosecond laser pulses, respectively. The orientation dependent ionization rates for various kinetic energy releases allow us to individually identify the ionizations of multiple orbitals, ranging from the highest occupied to the next two lower-lying molecular orbitals for various channels observed in our experiments. Not only the emission of a single electron, but also the sequential tunneling dynamics of two electrons from multiple orbitals are traced step by step. Our results confirm that the shape of the ionizing orbitals determine the strong laser field tunneling ionization in the CO molecule, whereas the linear Stark effect plays a minor role.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2012

Spatial imaging of the {H_2}^+ vibrational wave function at the quantum limit

We experimentally obtained a direct image of the nuclear wave functions of {H_2}^+ by dissociating the molecule via electron attachment and determining the vibrational state using the COLTRIMS technique. Our experiment visualizes the nodal structure of different vibrational states. We compare our results to the widely used reflection approximation and to quantum simulations and discuss the limits of position measurements in molecules imposed by the uncertainty principle.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2011

Carbon K-shell Photo Ionization of CO: Molecular frame angular Distributions of normal and conjugate shakeup Satellites

We have measured the molecular frame angular distributions of photoelectrons emitted from the Carbon K shell of fixed-in-space CO molecules for the case of simultaneous excitation of the remaining molecular ion. Normal and conjugate shake up states are observed. Photo electrons belonging to normal Σ-satellite lines show an angular distribution resembling that observed for the main photoline at the same electron energy. Surprisingly a similar shape is found for conjugate shake up states with Π-symmetry. In our data we identify shake rather than electron scattering (PEVE) as the mechanism producing the conjugate lines. The angular distributions clearly show the presence of a Σ-shape resonance for all of the satellite lines.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2010

Interatomic Coulombic Decay following Photoionization of the Helium Dimer: Observation of Vibrational Structure

Using synchrotron radiation we simultaneously ionize and excite one helium atom of a helium dimer (He_2) in a shakeup process. The populated states of the dimer ion (i.e. He^[*+](n = 2; 3)-He) are found to deexcite via interatomic coulombic decay. This leads to the emission of a second electron from the neutral site and a subsequent coulomb explosion. In this letter we present a measurement of the momenta of fragments that are created during this reaction. The electron energy distribution and the kinetic energy release of the two He^+ ions show pronounced oscillations which we attribute to the structure of the vibrational wave function of the dimer ion.

physics.atm-clus↗