On the absence of bound-state stabilization through short ultra-intense fields

Fring, A., Kostrykin, V. & Schrader, R. (1996). On the absence of bound-state stabilization through short ultra-intense fields. Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 29, p. 5651. doi: 10.1088/0953-4075/29/23/011

Abstract

We address the question of whether atomic bound states begin to stabilize in the short ultra-intense field limit. We provide a general theory of ionization probability and investigate its gauge invariance. For a wide range of potentials we find an upper and lower bound by non-perturbative methods, which clearly exclude the possibility that the ultra intense field might have a stabilizing effect on the atom. For short pulses we find almost complete ionization as the field strength increases.