Phys.org  December 23, 2022 Tunnel ionization is of paramount importance in strong-field physics and attoscience. However, the tunneling dynamics and properties of the outgoing electronic wave packets often remain hidden beneath the influence of the subsequent scattering of the released electron onto the ionic potential. An international team of researchers (France, Israel) has characterized the influence of sub-barrier dynamics on the amplitude and phase of the wave packets emerging from the tunnel using chiral molecules, whose photoionization by circularly polarized light produces forward-backward asymmetric electron distributions with respect to the light propagation direction. The asymmetric patterns provided a background-free signature […]