Fowler-Nordheim emission modified by laser pulses in the adiabatic regime

We investigate enhanced field emission due to a continuous or pulsed oscillating field added to a constant electric field E at the emitter surface. When the frequency of oscillation, field strength, and property of the emitter material satisfy the Keldysh condition gamma < 1/2, one can use the adiabatic approximation for treating the oscillating field, i.e., consider the tunneling through the instantaneous Fowler-Nordheim barrier created by both fields. Due to the great sensitivity of the emission to the field strength, the average tunneling current can be much larger than the current produced by only the constant field. We carry out the computations for arbitrary strong constant electric fields, beyond the commonly used Fowler-Nordheim approximation which exhibit, in particular, an important property of the wave function inside the potential barrier where it is found to be monotonically decreasing without oscillations. Published by AIP Publishing.