Numerical time-of-flight analysis of the strong-field photoeffect

Short-time filtering of the photoionization amplitude extracted straight from the numerical solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation (TDSE) is used to identify dominant pathways that form photoelectron spectra in strong fields. Thereby, the “black-box nature” of TDSE solvers only giving the final spectrum is overcome, and simpler approaches, e.g., semiclassical based on the strong-field approximation, can be tested and improved. The approach also allows to suppress intercycle quantum interference between pathways removing patterns that are usually washed out in experiments.