Two-pulse control of large-amplitude vibrations in H2(+)

A laser-adiabatic manipulation of the bond (LAMB) scheme using moderately intense fields is proposed to induce and control large-amplitude oscillations in nuclear wave packets. The present scheme involves an ultrashort UV pump pulse to initially create a wave packet in an excited electronic state of the hydrogen molecular ion and a low-frequency control pulse, which is switched on after a given time, leading to controllable vibrational trapping. The choice of H2(+) as the target exploits the larger dipole values that molecular ions present as the internuclear distance increases. The amplitude and oscillation period of the wave packet is tuned by the field parameters of the control pulse, and more importantly, significant dissociation and ionization losses are prevented by keeping the laser intensities below hundreds of Terawatts. Our numerical simulations, based on the solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation, show that this control of the bond length is achieved in a wide range of moderate intensities and for relatively long pulse durations, from tens to hundreds of femtoseconds.