Counter-intuitive Coulomb explosion in a strong laser field

We consider the dissociation of a heteronuclear diatomic molecule by a linearly polarized optical pulse of intensity P greater than or equal to 10(19) W/cm(2). We focus on Coulomb explosion of the transient ion, studying it in the framework of classical mechanics. We show that a strong laser field can suppress direct Coulomb explosion of diatomics stripped of several electrons. The picture of angular distributions of fragments resulting from Coulomb explosion is found to be dissimilar in different areas of the field parameters. In particular, two substantially different regimes of fragments dynamics are established: the dynamics in Coulomb field and the dynamics in the field of an effective potential "fragments + field." The effective potential includes both the force of Coulomb repulsion of the fragments and the force of the laser field, averaged over the period. This potential can be derived on the basis of the Kramers-Henneberger (KH) method. We discuss the applicability ranges of the KH approximation for this problem of infinite motion in the repulsive potential and the role of the pulse shape in detecting the regime in which KH potential has a double-peak structure. We also discuss the kinetic energy releases in both regimes. The kinetic energy releases are shown to provide an effective probe of the structure of the KH potential and validity of the KH approximation.