Strong-field photoelectron holography beyond the electric dipole approximation: A semiclassical analysis

For a quantitative trajectory-based description of strong-field photoelectron holography beyond the electric dipole approximation, we develop a semiclassical model in which the initial conditions of outgoing electrons are set according to the beyond-dipole strong-field approximation for the tunnel-ionization step. Phases are evaluated following the prescription for semiclassical propagators. Comparison to the numerical solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation in two spatial dimensions shows that the semiclassical model reproduces correctly the nondipole shifts of the photoelectron momenta along the laser propagation axis. The position of the central holographic interference fringe can be estimated already from a simplified Coulomb-free interference model providing closed-form expressions for the beyond-dipole shifts. To address Coulomb focusing in three dimensions, we implement a beyond-dipole regularization procedure based on the concept of glory scattering. While the position of the central maximum and higher-order fringes in three dimensions can already be obtained approximately by simpler semiclassical modeling, the glory model is able to describe the shape of the distribution at the central maximum. Our results show that nondipole dynamics in holography should be observable with midinfrared fields, for which the forward and backward shifts can be comparable with the fringe spacing.