Is there a nonzero tunneling delay in strong-field ionization?
In plain words
An attoclock uses a rotating laser field, like the hand of a clock, to time when an electron escapes an atom by tunneling. Experiments and analyses disagree on whether the escape takes a finite time or none.
Precise statement
In elliptically polarized strong-field ionization of atomic hydrogen or helium, extract the tunneling delay $\tau_T$ from the photoelectron momentum offset angle after subtracting the Coulomb deflection computed from the full time-dependent Schrodinger equation, and decide whether $\tau_T = 0$ within resolution. A 2019 hydrogen experiment (Sainadh et al., Nature) reported $\tau_{T}$ below about $1.8 \times 10^{-18}\,\mathrm{s}$.
What would settle it
Agreement between calibrated attoclock measurements on hydrogen at several intensities and a clock-model prediction.
Status in the literature
Unverified note: it names recent work and was partly written without a live literature search; it awaits a check by an editor.
2025 analyses (e.g. arXiv:2503.07859) continue to compare attoclock and Larmor-clock interpretations of strong-field tunneling.
Parent problems
- Special case of How long does a particle spend inside a tunneling barrier? · open · from revision 1
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