Abstract
We propose and experimentally validate the use of rotational echo responses for obtaining the degree of molecular alignment induced in a gas. The method is independent of various parameters that are hardly accessible in most experimental configurations such as the effective length of interaction and the gas density as it relies on the intrinsic, self-contained dynamics of the rotational echo response.
Highlights
Coherent control of molecular rotations has been thoroughly studied and vastly utilized in the last three decades
The basic physics of laser-induced rotational dynamics of linear molecules is well understood: an ultrashort laser pulse interacts with the molecules via their anisotropic polarizability and applies an effective torque that rotates them toward the polarization axis of the pulse
The proposed scheme is decoupled from the molecular polarizability, the interaction length, and the gas density, that are hardly accessible in most of the configurations used in rotational dynamics experiments
Summary
Coherent control of molecular rotations has been thoroughly studied and vastly utilized in the last three decades. The quantum-mechanical nature of molecular rotation imposes quantization of the angular momentum and of energy levels with EJ,m = hBcJ (J + 1) where J is the rotational quantum number, B is the molecular rotational coefficient in cm−1, c is the speed of light, and h is Planck’s constant. This quantization manifests in periodic recurrences of aligned and antialigned angular distributions of the ensemble throughout the coherent evolution of the ensemble with a period given by Trev = 1/2Bc, termed “the rotational revival period.”
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