Sensitivity of nonlinear photoionization to resonance substructure in collective excitation.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 25854939.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms7799 and PMC identifier 4403373.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Collective behaviour is a characteristic feature in many-body systems, important for developments in fields such as magnetism, superconductivity, photonics and electronics. Recently, there has been increasing interest in the optically nonlinear response of collective excitations. Here we demonstrate how the nonlinear interaction of a many-body system with intense XUV radiation can be used as an effective probe for characterizing otherwise unresolved features of its collective response. Resonant photoionization of atomic xenon was chosen as a case study. The excellent agreement between experiment and theory strongly supports the prediction that two distinct poles underlie the giant dipole resonance. Our results pave the way towards a deeper understanding of collective behaviour in atoms, molecules and solid-state systems using nonlinear spectroscopic techniques enabled by modern short-wavelength light sources.