Chaos effects in one-dimensional hydrogen, including the high-frequency regime

The system of highly excited hydrogen in combined strong ac and dc electric fields is examined. It is shown that the production and maintainence of effectively one-dimensional states is plausible in this system. The threshold of global classical chaos is calculated using the resonance overlap method. In the microwave regime, the ionization by chaos is compared with the ionization by tunneling in the dc field, showing the limits on the dc field in order for chaotic effects to be detectable in experiments. The investigation of a new regime of infrared, visible, and ultraviolet ac fields is proposed and pursued. The theory of quantum localization of classical chaos is motivated, and it is shown to come strongly into play in the proposed regime. A criterion for the appearance of spectral effects due to chaos, based on the localization theory, is proposed and calculated. It is demonstrated that chaos effects should be visible even in the presence of single-photon ionization.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio