光与物质的相互作用一直是科学的主旋律之一。随着超强超短激光技术的快速发展,如今人们可以研究单个原子的内部世界,并调控光与电子的相互作用,从而实现了对原子内电子的超快动力学过程的探索。强激光诱导的原子隧道电离是众多强场物理现象的基石,具有重要的研究意义,也是研究前沿的热点之一。综述了强场原子隧道电离的最新研究进展,基于隧道电离在自然坐标系(即抛物坐标系)中的非绝热隧穿理论,得到电子隧穿后的坐标分布和动量分布。介绍了电子在隧穿过程中获得的初始相位(即势垒下相位)的理论描述和实验测量方法。基于势垒下相位揭示出电子隧穿的量子动力学信息。综述了强激光场原子隧道电离过程中光电子自旋极化的研究进展,利用正交双色光场可以在时间和空间两个维度上精确地调控光电子的自旋自由度。最后进行了总结并展望了未来的研究前沿。

Light-matter interaction is always one of the themes of science. With the rapid development of ultra-short and ultra-strong laser techniques, nowadays we can research the internal world in a single atom and control the light-electron interactions to explore the ultrafast dynamics of intra-atomic electrons. Laser-induced tunneling ionization of atoms, as the footstone of many strong-field physical phenomena, has important research significance and is also one of the hot frontier topics. In this paper, we review the recent research advances in strong-field atomic tunneling ionization. The coordinate and momentum distributions of electrons after tunneling process are obtained based on the non-adiabatic tunneling ionization in the natural coordinates (i.e., the parabolic coordinates). We introduce the theoretical description and experimental measurement methods for the initial phase (i.e., the sub-barrier phase) of electrons obtained in the tunneling process. Based on the sub-barrier phase, we can reveal the quantum dynamical information of the tunneling process. We introduce the recent advances in photoelectron spin polarization during the strong-field tunneling ionization. On the basis of the orthogonal two-color fields, the degrees of freedom of photoelectrons in the time and space dimensions can be accurately controlled. Finally, we summarize this paper and predict future research advances.