Interaction of Superintense Laser Pulses with Relativistic Ions

At high intensities, three-step recollision processes driven by low frequency laser pulses, such as high-order harmonic generation and high-order above-threshold ionization, are normally severely suppressed by the magnetic-field component of the laser field. It is shown that this suppression is not severe, even for ponderomotive energies well above 10 keV, for multicharged ions moving at a sufficiently high relativistic velocity against a counterpropagating infrared laser pulse. Numerical results are presented for high-order harmonic emission by a single Ne⁹⁺ ion moving with a Lorentz factor γ=15 against a Nd:glass laser beam. The calculations are done within a Coulomb-corrected nondipole strong field approximation. The approximation is tested by comparing with accurate results.