Further aspects on the control of photodissociation in light-induced potentials

Abstract

In this work we show how to control the photodissociation of a diatomic molecule in the frame of light-induced potentials for different shapes of the transition dipole moments. A sequence of a half-cycle or control pulse and a delayed pump pulse is used for achieving state-selective photodissociation with high yields. The effect of the control is to shift the photodissociation bands to higher frequencies. It is also possible to dissociate the molecule in a superposition of electronic states of the fragments, even when the photodissociation bands corresponding to the different electronic states of the products are largely separated. In this case one needs to engineer the sequence delaying the half-cycle pulse after the pump pulse and additionally turning off rapidly the control pulse. Depending on the shape of the dipole functions the duration of the pulses in the sequence must be constrained to shorter times as well. Finally we show that the control scheme affects the velocity of the fragments. Although broad kinetic energy distributions are always obtained when the half-cycle pulse is short, if the Stark effect implies a blueshifting in the energy of the electronic states, the distribution of the relative speed of the fragments will be redshifted.