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Strong-field ionization of complex molecules

Strong-field photoelectron momentum imaging of the prototypical biomolecule indole was disentangled in a combined experimental and computational approach. Experimentally, strong control over the molecules enabled the acquisition of photoelectron momentum distributions in the molecular frame for a well-defined, narrow range of incident intensities. A novel, highly efficient semiclassical simulation setup based on the adiabatic tunneling theory quantitatively reproduced these results. Jointly, experiment and computations revealed holographic structures in the asymptotic momentum distributions, which were found to sensitively depend on the alignment of the molecular frame. We identified the essential molecular properties that shape the photoelectron wavepacket in the first step of the ionization process and employ a quantum-chemically exact description of the cation during the subsequent continuum dynamics. The detailed modeling of the molecular ion, which accounts for its polarization by the laser-electric field, enables the simulation of laser-induced electron diffraction off large and complex molecules and provides full insight into the photoelectron's dynamics in terms of semiclassical trajectories. This provides the computational means to unravel strong-field diffractive imaging of biomolecular systems on femtosecond time scales.