Photodetachment of H⁻ near a hard wall with arbitrary laser polarization direction

The photodetachment of H⁻ near a hard wall is investigated with linear polarized laser light travelling in arbitrary direction θ_L with respect to the z axis. An analytical formula for the total cross section is derived using semi-classical closed orbit theory, which consists of two terms, i.e., the smooth background term and the oscillatory term with an extra factor 2(θ_L). This factor controls oscillations in the total photodetachment cross section. The amplitude of oscillation is maximum at θ_L = 0 when the laser polarization direction is perpendicular to the wall and it approaches zero at θ_L = π /2 when the laser polarization direction is parallel to the wall. It is also observed that the total cross section depends on the source–wall distance and it reduces to a free space case when the wall is at infinite distance from the source. (paper)