Measuring Coulomb-Induced Ionization Time Lag with a Calibrated Attoclock

Electrons in atoms and molecules can not react immediately to the action of intense laser field. A time lag (about 100 attoseconds) between instants of the field maximum and the ionization-rate maximum emerges. This lag characterizes the response time of the electronic wave function to the strong-field ionization event and has important effects on subsequent ultrafast dynamics of the ionized electron. The absolute time lag is not accessible in experiments. Here, a calibrated attoclock procedure, which is related to a simple Coulomb-induced temporal correction to electron trajectories, is proposed to measure the relative lag of two different ionization events. Using this procedure,the difference (i.e., the relative lag) between the ionization time lags of polar molecules in two consecutive half laser cycles can be probed with a high accuracy.