Signatures of tunneling and multiphoton ionization by short-laser pulses: The partial-wave distribution

We analyze the two-dimensional angular momentum-energy distribution of electrons emitted from argon by short laser pulses. We identify characteristic features of both multiphoton and tunneling ionization in the partial-wave distribution for Keldysh parameters close to unity. We observe a remarkable degree of quantum-classical correspondence in the photoinization process which becomes even more pronounced after intensity averaging over the focal volume. We derive an energy-dependent cut-off for the highest angular momentum accessible within the framework of the strong-field approximation, which accurately reproduces the partial wave distributions found from solutions of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation.