Laser Power Balance for Effective Multi-Step Photoionization of Degenerate Atoms

Abstract

Optimization of laser power balance is studied numerically for effective multi-step photo-ionization of degenerate atoms. To date, a large number of similar studies have been executed for simple nondegenerate atoms and, therefore, the emphasis in this study is placed on investigating the role of the level degeneracy. It is concluded that a monotonically increasing J-value in the excitation ladder of levels is preferable, which is followed by some variations thereof. It should also be noted that a reasonably high ionization rate is attainable, in any case, provided that the Rabi-frequencies are optimized at the expense of the sizable laser powers required. The computer code employed here, which deals with the population evolution among numerous magnetic sublevels, has been tested against experiments in advance of the above numerical study.