Atomic Physics Seminars

During the past ten years considerable attention has been devoted to the use of intense subpicosecond optical pulses to align and orient molecules (diabatic alignment and orientation). An intense pulse can give a momentum kick to the molecule, allowing for the creation of a rotational wavepacket and leading to periodic alignment and/or orientation. Although diabatic alignment was demonstrated several years ago, the ability to orient molecules using electric field pulses has yet to be proven experimentally. One possibility is to use an intense half-cycle pulse (terahertz radiation) which couples to the permanent dipole moment of a polar molecule (our case HBr). Another possibility is to overlap two electric laser field pulses with different optical frequencies (namely omega and 2*omega). In this seminar I will describe in more detail the different techniques for aligning and orienting molecules (static fields, laser fields) along with numerous possible applications in molecular and optical physics. I will also give an update on our recent computational and experimental efforts to achieve diabatic, field-free, orientation in the laboratory.