We formulate a microcanonical distribution for an arbitrary one-electron triatomic molecule. This distribution can be used to describe the initial state in strongly-driven two-electron triatomic molecules. Namely, in many semiclassical models that describe ionization of two-electron molecules driven by intense infrared laser fields in the tunneling regime initially one electron tunnels while the other electron is bound. The microcanonical distribution presented in this work can be used to describe the initial state of this bound electron.
Using a semi-classical model, we investigate frustrated double ionization (FDI) in $mathrm{D_3^+}$, a two-electron triatomic molecule, when driven by an intense, linearly polarized, near-infrared (800 nm) laser field. We compute the kinetic energy release of the nuclei and find a good agreement between experiment and our model. We explore the two pathways of FDI and show that, with increasing field strength, over-the-barrier ionization overtakes tunnel ionization as the underlying mechanism of FDI. Moreover, we compute the angular distribution of the ion fragments for FDI and identify a feature that can potentially be observed experimentally and is a signature of only one of the two pathways of FDI.
Theoretical calculations are contributing a significantly higher proportion of data to contemporary spectroscopic databases, which have traditionally relied on experimental observations and semi-empirical models. It is now a common procedure to extend calculated line lists to include ro-vibrational transitions between all bound states of the ground electronic state up to the dissociation limit. Advanced ab initio methods are utilized to calculate the potential energy and dipole moment surfaces (PESs and DMSs), and semi-empirical PESs are then obtained by combining ab initio and experimental data. The objective is to reach high accuracy in the calculated transition intensities for all parts of spectrum, i.e. to increase the predictive power of the model. We show that in order to perform this task, one needs, in addition to the standard improvements of the PES and DMS in the spectroscopically accessible regions, to extend the ab initio calculations of the PES towards the united-atom limit along the stretching coordinates. The argument is based on the correlation between the intensities of high-overtone transitions and the repulsive potential wall that has previously been theoretically established for diatomic molecules and is empirically extended here to linear and nonlinear triatomic molecules. We generate partial line lists for water and ozone, and together with an already available line list for carbon dioxide, we derive the normal intensity distribution, which is a direct consequence of this correlation. The normal distribution is not an instrument to compute highly accurate intensities, rather it is a means to analyze the intensities computed by the traditional methods.
Using a semi-classical model, we study the formation of highly excited neutral fragments during the fragmentation of $mathrm{H_3^+}$, a two-electron triatomic molecule, driven by an intense near-IR laser field. To do so, we first formulate a microcanonical distribution for arbitrary one-electron triatomic molecules. We then study frustrated double and single ionization in strongly-driven $mathrm{H_3^+}$ and compute the kinetic energy release of the nuclei for these two processes. Moreover, we investigate the dependence of frustrated ionization on the strength of the laser field as well as on the geometry of the initial molecular state.
The ground-state energies of one-electron homonuclear quasi-molecules for the nuclear charge number in the range Z=1-100 at the chemical distances R= 2/Z (in a.u.) are calculated. The calculations are performed for both point- and extended-charge nucleus cases using the Dirac-Fock-Sturm approach with the basis functions constructed from the one-center Dirac-Sturm orbitals. The critical distances R_cr, at which the ground-state level reaches the edge of the negative-energy Dirac continuum, are calculated for homonuclear quasi-molecules in the range: Z=85-100. It is found that in case of U_2^{183+} the critical distance R_cr = 38.42 fm for the point-charge nuclei and R_cr = 34.72 fm for extended nuclei.
We demonstrate significant enhancement of frustrated double ionization (FDI) in the two-electron triatomic molecule D$_{3}^{+}$ when driven by counter-rotating two-color circular (CRTC) laser fields. We employ a three-dimensional semiclassical model that fully accounts for electron and nuclear motion in strong fields. For different pairs of wavelengths, we compute the probabilities of the FDI pathways as a function of the ratio of the two field-strengths. We identify a pathway of frustrated double ionization that is not present in strongly-driven molecules with linear fields. In this pathway the first ionization step is frustrated and electronic correlation is essentially absent. This pathway is responsible for enhancing frustrated double ionization with CRTC fields. We also employ a simple model that predicts many of the main features of the probabilities of the FDI pathways as a function of the ratio of the two field-strengths.