Energy quantization in double ioinization in strong laser fields

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Femtosecond lasers today routinely provide intensities at which many photons can be absorbed by a single atom leading to the ejection of one or more electrons. For emission of a single electron the quantization of the energy of the light field leads to discrete peaks in the energy spectrum of the emitted electron which are spaced by the photon energy. For ejection of two electrons discrete energy structures in the two electron continuum are predicted by theory but have not been observed experimentally so far. This projects aims to provide this missing experimental evi-dence. Since October 2011 we have a new unique femtosecond Laser (100 kHz, 100 uJ at 800 nm, 45 fsec) together with a dedicated COLTRIMS reaction microscope in our laboratory at Frankfurt University. We propose to use this facility to show for the first time the long predicted quantization of energy in the two electron continuum in strong field double ionization. We will address many open questions connected to this fundamental quantum phenomenon such as verification of the ponderomotive shift in the two electron continuum, consequences of the even or odd symmetry of the two electron continuum resulting from the even or odd number of photons absorbed and the question if only the sum energy or for sequential ionization also the individual electron energy is quantized.