Orientation of polar molecules by laser induced adiabatic passage

We show that two overlapping linearly polarized laser pulses of frequencies omega and its second harmonic 2omega can strongly orient linear polar molecules, by adiabatic passage along dressed states. The resulting robust orientation can be interpreted as a laser-induced localization in the effective double well potential created by the fields, which induces a preliminary molecular alignment. The direction of the orientation can be selected by the relative phase of the fields.