Fully differential photoionization delays in the water molecule
Phys. Rev. A 114, 033109 – Published 15 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/62tp-ysgk
Abstract
We present fully correlated calculations of angularly resolved one- and two-photon photoionization delays in for different ionization channels and light-polarization directions. By solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in full dimensionality, we obtain molecular-frame photoelectron angular distributions, Wigner delays, and two-photon photoionization delays for the three lowest cationic states of water. The comparison between Wigner and two-photon delays reveals that the interaction with the infrared (IR) field strongly reshapes the angular dependence of the delays, leading to pronounced anisotropies and directional asymmetries that are absent in the one-photon delays. Within a given sideband, the resulting angular variations can reach up to as for a fixed vibrational state, while differences between vibrational levels of the residual cation at a fixed emission angle are typically limited to as. The continuum-continuum contribution induced by the IR field is found to strongly depend on the photoelectron emission direction and molecular orientation, indicating that isotropic approximations commonly employed for atomic targets are not generally adequate for molecular systems. These results highlight the importance of orientation-resolved measurements for accessing the full complexity of molecular photoionization dynamics.