Proposal for Measuring Electron Displacement Induced by a Short Laser Pulse

Abstract

In laser-matter interaction, most previous studies have focused on the change of the electron momentum induced by the external fields. Here, we theoretically investigate the electron displacement induced by an ultrashort pulse, whose precise waveform is hard to determine experimentally. We propose and numerically demonstrate a scheme to accurately measure the electron displacement using a ruler formed by the interfering spirals in the photoelectron momentum distribution generated by two oppositely circularly polarized pulses. The scheme is robust against the focusing volume effects and the jitter of the carrier envelope phase of the two circular pulses. The ability to measure the electron displacement by an arbitrary pulse may pave the way to quantitative control of the charge migration in matter on the scale of Ångström.