2024/11/11 by D. Blume, Qingze Guan, Blume, D. +7
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.06756
openalex publication_date 2024/11/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Short intense laser pulses are routinely used to induce rotational wave packet dynamics of molecules. Ro-vibrational wave packet dynamics has been explored comparatively infrequently, focusing predominantly on extremely light and rigid molecules such as H2+, H2, and D2. This work presents quantum mechanical calculations that account for the rotational \emand the vibrational degrees of freedom for a heavier and rather floppy diatomic molecule, namely the neon dimer. For pumping by a strong and short non-resonant pump pulse, we identify several phenomena that depend critically on the vibrational (i.e., radial) degree of freedom. Our calculations show (i) fingerprints of the radial dynamics in the alignment signal; (ii) laser-kick induced dissociative dynamics on very short time scales (ejection of highly structured "jets"); and (iii) tunneling dynamics that signifies the existence of resonance states, which are supported by the effective potential curves for selected finite relative angular momenta. Our theory predictions can be explored by existing state-of-the-art experiments.