Dr. Horbatsch: Atto-science - exploring the timing of atomic ionization events

All members of are invited to join us in another exhilarating talk hosted by PSYU. We are excited to welcome Dr. Horbatsh, from the Department of Physics & Astronomy at York University researching in atomic, molecular & optical physics. The talk will be held in PSE 317 at 5.00PM. Food, drink, great talk, and good company are always guaranteed! All are welcome and free to attend. ~Talk's Abstract~ Short circularly polarized laser-pulse experiments at the ETH Zuerich (http://www.ulp.ethz.ch/research/attoclock.html) were interpreted as measuring the time it takes for a photo-electron to tunnel ionize. Here we present results from numerical simulations based on the time-dependent Schroedinger equation that explore the systematics of the ionization process and in particular, electron wavepacket formation. While these results put in question whether the attoclock set-up measures tunnelling time, they do illustrate the fascination of atto-science: femtosecond lasers allowed to explore the dynamics of chemical reactions; attosecond laser pulses are capable of probing the dynamics of an atomic ionization event.