Science: Benchmark Calculations for Multi-Photon Ionization of the Hydrogen Molecule and the Hydrogen Molecular Ion by Short-Pulse Intense Laser Radiation
Abstract: We provide an overview of our recent work on the implementation of the finite-element discrete-variable representation to study the interaction of a few-cycle intense laser pulse with the H$_2$ and H$_2^{\,+}$ molecules. The problem is formulated in prolate spheroidal coordinates, the ideal system for a diatomic molecule, and the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation is solved on a space-time grid. The physical information is extracted by projecting the time-evolved solution to the appropriate field-free states of the problem.