Controlling the optical dipole force for molecules with field-induced alignment

Abstract

We measure the role of field-induced alignment on the dipole force for molecules using a single focused nonresonant laser beam. We show that through the alignment process we can modify the effective polarizability by field polarization and thus control the center-of-mass motion of the molecule. We observe a maximum change of $20%$ in the dipole force on CS${}_{2}$ molecules when changing from linearly to circularly polarized light. Additionally, the effect of the dipole force on different vibrational states is also studied.