OBSERVATION OF NONSEQUENTIAL DOUBLE IONIZATION OF HELIUM WITH OPTICAL TUNNELING

We have measured the ion yields for helium ionized by 120 fs, 614 nm laser pulses for intensities near 10(16) W/cm2. We have found that for these ultrashort pulses the He+2 data exhibit a feature which saturates in parallel with the He+ signal indicating that the ionization may proceed nonsequentially. We propose a new mechanism, which can exist only in the tunneling regime, for such nonsequential ionization.