Femtosecond coherent control of thermal photoassociation of magnesium atoms

Leonid Rybak, Zohar Amitay*, Saieswari Amaran, Ronnie Kosloff, Michał Tomza, Robert Moszynski, Christiane P. Koch

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate femtosecond photoassociation of thermally hot atoms in the gas phase and its coherent control. In the photoassociation process, formation of a chemical bond is facilitated by light in a free-to-bound optical transition. Here, we study free-to-bound photoassociation of a diatomic molecule induced by femtosecond pulses exciting a pair of scattering atoms interacting via the van-der-Waals-type electronic ground state potential into bound levels of an electronically excited state. The thermal gas of reactants is at temperatures in the range of hundreds of degrees. Despite this incoherent initial state, rotational and vibrational coherences are observed in the probing of the created Mg 2 molecules.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)383-394
Number of pages12
JournalFaraday Discussions
Volume153
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011

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