Dimensional scaling treatment of stability of atomic anions induced by superintense, high-frequency laser fields

We show that dimensional scaling, combined with the high-frequency Floquet theory, provides useful means to evaluate the stability of gas phase atomic anions in a superintense laser field. At the large-dimension limit (D ->infinity), in a suitably scaled space, electrons become localized along the polarization direction of the laser field. We find that calculations at large D are much simpler than D=3, yet yield similar results for the field strengths needed to bind an extra one or two electrons to H and He atoms. For both linearly and circularly polarized laser fields, the amplitude of quiver motion of the electrons correlates with the detachment energy. Despite large differences in scale, this correlation is qualitatively like that found between internuclear distances and dissociation energies of chemical bonds. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.