Probing Correlated Ionization Dynamics at relativistic intensities with atomic ion beams

Strong few-cycle lasers enable sequential ionization of more than one electron per optical half-cycle. Understanding these correlated electron ionization events is crucial in developing a model of ionization dynamics in few-cycle laser fields and describing the foundations of laser plasma generation [1]. We have developed an experimental setup capable of characterizing correlated ionization events (see Fig. 1). In our approach, ions from a fast cold ion beam are used as this eliminates several major experimental limitations that have hampered such studies in the past, most notably, ionization of background gas.