Photodetachment microscopy in time-dependent fields

Photodetachment of negative ions in combined laser and low-frequency fields is investigated. The time-dependent Green's function method is used for calculation of electron flux at a macroscopic distance from the photodetachment source, typical for a photodetachment microscopy experiment. In calculating the electron flux, we use the stationary phase method for the time integral, equivalent to the semiclassical approximation, to compute the time-dependent wave function. The stationary points t ((i))(1), i = 1,..., n correspond to time instances of launching of classical trajectories arriving at the detector at a given spacetime point (r, t). The number of trajectories n contributing to the electron flux at any point in the classically allowed spacetime domain can be controlled by varying the switching interval of the high-frequency laser which initiates the photodetachment process. The divergences inherent in the electron flux in the semiclassical treatment are removed by using the uniform Airy approximation near the caustics.