Ionization of deep quantum wells: Optical trampoline effect

A new mechanism of transitions of an electronic system from the ground state to states with excitation energies exceeding many times the energy of a light photon initiating the transitions has been considered. This mechanism is based on the so-called optical "trampoline" effect: one of the interacting electrons receives energy from another electron and, simultaneously absorbing a photon hw, overcomes the energy gap significantly exceeding hw. Ionization of deep quantum wells by low-frequency light of moderate intensity due to the optical trampoline effect was calculated.