Ellipticity Dependence of Excitation and Ionization of Argon Atoms by Short-Pulse Infrared Radiation

When atoms or molecules are exposed to strong short-pulse infrared radiation, ionization as well as frustrated tunneling ionization (FTI) can occur, in which a portion of the almost ionized electrons recombine into the initial ground or an excited bound state. We analyze the ellipticity dependence of the relative signals that are predicted in a single-active electron approximation (SAE), the validity of which is checked against a parameter-free multi-electron hbox{$R$-matrix} (close-coupling) with time dependence approach. We find good agreement between the results from both models, thereby providing confidence in the SAE model potential to treat the process of interest. Comparison of the relative excitation probabilities found in our numerical calculations with the predictions of Landsman {it et al.} (New Journal of Physics {bf 15} (2013) 013001) and Zhao {it et al.} (Optics Express {bf 27} (2019) 21689) reveals good agreement with the former for short pulses. For longer pulses, the ellipticity dependence becomes wider than that obtained from the Landsman {it et al.} formula, but we do not obtain the increase compared to linearly polarized radiation predicted by Zhao {it et al.}