We have studied the ionization of Rydberg hydrogen atom near a metal surface with a semiclassical analysis of photoionization microscopy. Interference patterns of the electron radial distribution are calculated at different scaled energies above the classical saddle point and at various atom surface distances. We find that different types of trajecto- ries contribute predominantly to different manifolds in a certain interference pattern. As the scaled energy increases, the structure of the interference pattern evolves smoothly and more types of trajectories emerge. As the atom approaches the metal surface closer, there are more types of trajectories contributing to the interference pattern as well. When the Rydberg atom comes very close to the metal surface or the scaled energy approaches the zero field ionization energy, the potential induced by the metal surface will make atomic system chaotic. The results also show that atoms near a metal surface exhibit similar properties like the atoms in the parallel electric and magnetic fields.
The tunneling between double wells of atom in crossed electromagnetic fields is investigated by a one-dimensional Hamiltonian model. The crossed fields induced outer well is apart from the nuclear origin and it is very difficult to access by means of spectroscopy but it will be possible if there exists the tunneling of the electron between the outer well and the Coulomb potential predominated well at the nuclear origin. A one-dimensional quantum calculation with B-spline basis has been performed for hydrogen atom in crossed fields accessible in our laboratory, at B = 0.8 T and F = -220 V.cm^-1. The calculation shows that the wavefunctions of some excited states close to the Stark saddle point in the outer well extend over to the Coulomb potential well, making it possible to penetrate the quantum information of the outer well. However, the tunneling rate is very small and the spectral measurement of the transitions from the ground state should be of a high resolution and high sensitivity.
This paper investigates the photodetachment of the negative hydrogen ion H- near an elastic wall in a magnetic field. The magnetic field confines the perpendicular motion of the electron, which results in a real three-dimensional well for the detached electron. The analytical formulas for the cross section of the photodetachment in the three-dimensional quantum well are derived based on both the quantum approach and closed-orbit theory. The magnetic field and the elastic surface lead to two completely different modulations to the cross section of the photodetachment. The oscillation amplitude depends on the strength of the magnetic field, the ion-wall distance and the photon polarization as well. Specially, for the circularly polarized photon-induced photodetachment, the cross sections display a suppressed （E - Eth）1/2 threshold law with energy E in the vicinity above Landau energy Eta, contrasting with the （E - Eta）-1/2 threshold law in the presence of only the magnetic field. The semiclassical calculation fits the quantum result quite well, although there are still small deviations. The difference is attributed to the failure of semiclassical mechanics.
We observe strong energy-dependent quantum defects in the scaled-energy Stark spectra for ｜M｜ =1 Rydberg states of barium atoms at three scaled energies：ε=-2.000, ε=-2.500 and ε=-3.000. In an attempt to explain the observations, theoretical calculations of closed orbit theory based on a model potential including core effect are performed for non-hydrogenic atoms. While such a potential has been uniformly successful for alkali atoms with a single valence electron, it fails to match experimental results for barium atoms in the 6snp Rydberg states with two valence electrons. Our study points out that this discrepancy is due to the strong perturbation from the 5d8p state, which voids the simple approximation for constant quantum defects of principle quantum number n.
In the ionisation of Rydberg hydrogen atoms near a metal surface, the electron will escape from the nucleus and arrive at the detector in a time sequence. This probability flux train relies on the initial electron wave packet irradiated by the laser pulse. For simplicity, the laser pulse is usually simplified to a delta function in energy domain, resulting in a sharp initial arrival time with an exponentially decaying tail at the detector. Actually and semiclassically, the initial outgoing wave should be modeled as an ensemble of trajectories propagating away from the atomic core in all directions with a range of launch times and a range of energies. In this case, each pulse in the pulse train is averaged out rather than a sharp profile. We examine how energy and time averaging of the electron wave packet affects the resolution of escaping electron pulses and study the energy dependence of the arrival time for each pulse in the ionisation train. An optimization condition for the laser pulse shape to generate narrow ionisation electron pulse in the train is obtained. The ionisation rates with various excitation energy are calculated also, which show the excitation to higher N Rydberg states will narrow the electron pulse as well.
