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Updated: Jan 31, 2026

Direct Imaging of Laser-driven Ultrafast Molecular Rotation
Published on: February 4, 2017
Rotational Alignment Decay and Decoherence of Molecular Superrotors
Benjamin A Stickler1, Farhad Taher Ghahramani2, Klaus Hornberger1
1University of Duisburg-Essen, Faculty of Physics, Lotharstraße 1, 47048 Duisburg, Germany.
Abstract:
We present the quantum master equation describing the coherent and incoherent dynamics of a rapidly rotating molecule in the presence of a thermal background gas. The master equation relates the rate of rotational alignment decay and decoherence to the microscopic scattering amplitudes, which we calculate for anisotropic van der Waals scattering. For large rotational energies, we find quantitative agreement of the resulting alignment decay rate with recent superrotor experiments.
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