Andreas Becker

To study the highly nonlinear and nonperturbative interaction of intense laser light with matter we develop and apply several theoretical approaches, ranging from ab-initio numerical solutions to various approximation methods.

The absorption of a single photon by matter is well understood. But, how does our understanding of the underlying quantum effects, such as selection rules, extend if an atom or molecule absorbs more than one photon from an intense laser field?

While many effects in strong-field physics can be described using the single-active-electron approximation, energy transfer between electrons is mediated with electron correlation. We attempt to capture multielectron effects driven by short intense laser pulses.