November 2, 1992 Journal article Open Access

Observation of nonsequential double ionization of helium with optical tunneling

Fittinghoff, D. N.; Bolton, P. R.; Chang, B.; Kulander, K. C.

We have measured the ion yields for helium ionized by 120 fs, 614 nm laser pulses for intensities near 1016 W/cm2. We have found that for these ultrashort pulses the He+2 data exhibit a feature which saturates in parallel with the He+ signal indicating that the ionization may proceed nonsequentially. We propose a new mechanism, which can exist only in the tunneling regime, for such nonsequential ionization.