Observability of the dynamic stabilization of ground-state hydrogen with superintense femtosecond laser pulses

Theoretical information on dynamic stabilization (DS) of the ground state of H is still fragmentary, while its detection has remained open because of a lack of lasers with the required characteristics. The problem has been reactivated by the new light sources that are being developed, such as VUV-FEL’s or attosecond pulses from high-harmonic generation, which will offer adequate frequencies, intensities, and pulse durations. We are now presenting a mapping out of DS over an extended range of high frequencies, for pulses with various envelopes, peak intensities, and durations. We find prominent DS under conditions where our nonrelativistic, dipole approximation, and calculation should be valid. There is a marked dependence of DS on the pulse shape. The effect of quasistationary stabilization (of the rates) on DS is analyzed. We comment on the impact of our results on the detection possibility. We conclude that ground-state DS for H should be observable with the new light sources in a state-of-the-art experiment.