Fig. 2: Experimental signatures of LIPs.
From: Probing multiphoton light-induced molecular potentials
a A few-cycle visible pulse (yellow) ionizes H2 and prepares a wave packet on the σg state of the molecular cation. An additional mid-infrared control pulse (red) couples the σg and σu states by 1, 3, or 5 photons, creating LIPs, on which H2+ dissociates into an H atom and a proton. b The measured proton momentum distribution in the recoil frame for perpendicularly polarized two-color fields (730 nm, 5 fs, 2 × 1014 W/cm2, and 2300 nm, 45 fs, 3 × 1013 W/cm2) probes the LIPs. It strongly contrasts results obtained for c only mid-IR pulses (2000 nm, 65 fs, 1 × 1014 W/cm2) or d only visible (730 nm, 5 fs, 2 × 1014 W/cm2) pulses. The angular structure is moreover absent in two-color experiments carried out with parallel polarization (e). The data has been integrated over the direction perpendicular to the polarization plane. The arrows indicate the polarization axes of the visible (orange) and mid-IR (red) laser pulses. The color scale represents the measured proton yield normalized to the maximum value in each plot.
