Michael Straub, Thomas Ding, Marc Rebholz, Gergana D Borisova, Alexander Magunia, Hannes Lindenblatt, Severin Meister, Florian Trost, Yimeng Wang, Steffen Palutke, Markus Braune, Stefan Düsterer, Rolf Treusch, Chris H Greene, Robert Moshammer, Thomas Pfeifer, Christian Ott
We report the measurement of the photoelectron angular distribution of two-photon single-ionization near the 2p^{2} ^{1}D^{e} double-excitation resonance in helium, benchmarking the fundamental nonlinear interaction of two photons with two correlated electrons. This observation is enabled by the unique combination of intense extreme ultraviolet pulses, delivered at the high-repetition-rate free-electron laser in Hamburg (FLASH), ionizing a jet of cryogenically cooled helium atoms in a reaction microscope. The spectral structure of the intense self-amplified spontaneous emission free-electron laser pulses has been resolved on a single-shot level to allow for post selection of pulses, leading to an enhanced spectral resolution, and introducing a new experimental method...
October 28, 2022: Physical Review Letters