  We present a detailed study of the ionisation probability of H and
H$_{2}^{+}$ induced by a short intense laser pulse. Starting from a
Coulomb-Volkov description of the process we derive a multipole-like expansion
where each term is factored into two contributions: one that accounts for the
effect of the electromagnetic field on the free-electron final-state and a
second factor that depends only on the target structure. Such a separation may
be valuable to solve complex atomic or molecular systems as well as to
interpret the dynamics of the process in simpler terms. We show that the series
expansion converges rapidly, and thus the inclusion of the first few terms are
sufficient to produce accurate results.

Atomic Physics