Imaging molecular orbitals with laser-induced electron tunneling spectroscopy

Photoelectron spectroscopy in intense laser fields has proven to be a powerful tool for providing detailed insights into molecular structure. The ionizing molecular orbital, however, has not been reconstructed from the photoelectron spectra, mainly due to the fact that its phase information can be hardly extracted. In this work, we propose a method to retrieve the phase information of the ionizing molecular orbital with laser-induced electron tunneling spectroscopy. By analyzing the interference pattern in the photoelectron spectrum, the weighted coefficients and the relative phases of the constituent atomic orbitals for a molecular orbital can be extracted. With this information we reconstruct the highest occupied molecular orbital of N$_2$. Our work provides a reliable and general approach for imaging of molecular orbitals with the photoelectron spectroscopy.
Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, including Supplementary Materials