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Updated: Aug 29, 2026

Direct Imaging of Laser-driven Ultrafast Molecular Rotation
Published on: February 4, 2017
Optical control of the rotational angular momentum of a molecular Rydberg wave packet
R S Minns1, R Patel, J R R Verlet
1Department of Chemistry, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
An intuitive scheme for controlling the rotational quantum state of a Rydberg molecule is demonstrated experimentally. We determine the accumulated phase difference between the various components of a molecular electron wave packet, and then employ a sequence of phase-locked optical pulses to selectively enhance or depopulate specific rotational states. The angular momentum composition of the resulting wave packet, and the efficiency of the control scheme, is determined by calculating the multipulse response of the time-dependent Rydberg populations.
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