Associate Professor LI Xiaokai and Professor WANG Chuncheng, from the Institute of Atomic and Molecular Physics of Jilin University (JLU), have made significant progress recently in their research on laser-induced tunneling electron dynamics.

The internationally renowned academic journal Light: Science & Applications accepted their research work and published their article Coulomb focusing in attosecond angular streaking on Sept 11, 2024.

The primary authors are LI Xiaokai and LIU Xiwang, associate professors of Hainan University (HNU). Professors DING Dajun and WANG Chuncheng of JLU, and YANG Weifeng and SONG Xiaohong, professors of HNU, are the corresponding authors.

Tunneling ionization is a basic phenomenon in the interaction between strong laser fields and atomic molecules and an important foundation for frontier research in ultrafast physics such as attosecond light generation and attosecond metrology.

According to the article, attosecond angular streaking technology is an important attosecond method for detecting attosecond electron dynamics experiments based on strong field tunneling ionization.

The JLU research group worked with the theoretical research team of HNU and discovered that the measurement of attosecond angular streaking is closely related to the statistical distribution of electron wave packet momentum/energy generated by quantum tunneling ionization. In particular, the Coulomb effect under the potential barrier in nonadiabatic tunneling can further enhance the Coulomb focusing effect, providing a new approach for exploring the tunneling dynamics of classical forbidden regions under the potential barrier.