Identifying photoelectron releasing order in strong-field dissociative ionization of H2

Driven by intense laser fields, the outgoing photoelectrons in molecules possess a quiver motion, resulting in the rise of the effective ionization potential. The coupling of the field dressed ionization potential with abundant molecular dynamics complicates the laser-molecule interactions. Here, we demonstrate an approach to resolve photoelectron releasing order in the dissociative and non-dissociative channels of multiphoton ionization driven by an orthogonally polarized two-color femtosecond laser pulse. The photoelectron kinetic energy releases and the regular nodes in the photoelectron angular distributions due to the participation of different continuum partial waves allow us to deduce the field-dressed ionization potential of various channels. It returns the ponderomotive energy experienced by the outgoing electron and reveals the corresponding photoionization instants within the laser pulse. Our results provide a route to explore the complex strong-field ionization dynamics of molecules using two-dimensional photoelectron momentum spectroscopy.& COPY; 2023 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement