Correlated electron dynamics in nonsequential double ionization by orthogonal two-color laser pulses

We have investigated the correlated electron dynamics in nonsequential double ionization (NSDI) of helium by the orthogonally polarized two-color pulses that consisted of an 800-nm and a 400-nm laser fields using the classical ensemble model. Depending on the relative phase of the two-color field, the electron momentum distributions along the polarization direction of the 800-nm field exhibit a surprisingly strong anticorrelated or correlated behavior. Back analysis reveals that recollisions eventually leading to NSDI are concentrated in a time window as short as several hundreds attoseconds with this scheme. By changing the relative phase of the two-color field, the revisit time of recolliding electron wave packet has been controlled with attosecond precision, which is responsible for the various correlated behaviors of the two electrons. Our results reveal that the orthogonally polarized two-color field can serve as a powerful tool to control the correlated electron dynamics in NSDI. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America