Related papers: Steering ultracold reactions through long-lived tr…
The properties of supercritical fluids are dictated by intermolecular interactions that involve two or more molecules. Such intermolecular interactions were described via intermolecular potentials in historical supercritical combustion…
In order to study ultracold charge-transfer processes in hybrid atom-ion traps, we have mapped out the potential energy curves and molecular parameters for several low lying states of the Rb, Yb$^+$ system. We employ both a multi-reference…
Long-range Rydberg molecules (LRMs) form when a highly excited Rydberg electron scatters from ground-state atoms inside its orbit, creating oscillatory, long-range potentials. We present a combined theoretical and experimental study of…
The nonlinear optical dynamics of nano-materials comprised of plasmons interacting with quantum emitters is investigated by a self-consistent model based on the coupled Maxwell-Liouville-von Neumann equations. It is shown that ultra-short…
We investigate pump-dump photoassociation of ultracold molecules with amplitude- and phase-modulated femtosecond laser pulses. For this purpose a perturbative model for the light-matter interaction is developed and combined with a genetic…
The internal electric field of a Rydberg atom electron can bind a polar molecule to form a giant ultralong-range stable polyatomic molecule. Such molecules not only share their properties with Rydberg atoms, they possess huge permanent…
The control of chemical reactions is a recurring theme in physics and chemistry. Traditionally, chemical reactions have been investigated by tuning thermodynamic parameters, such as temperature or pressure. More recently, physical methods…
Efficient production of short-lived radioactive isotopes in inverse reaction kinematics is an important technique for various applications. It is particularly interesting when the isotope of interest is only a few nucleons away from a…
Photoinduced phase transitions from insulating to metallic states, accompanied by structural re-arrangements, have been recently reported in complex transition-metal oxides. However, the optical control of a purely electronic phase…
Quantum gases of doubly-polar molecules represent appealing frameworks for a variety of cross-disciplinary applications, encompassing quantum simulation and computation, controlled quantum chemistry and precision measurements. Through a…
We present a novel method to construct particle accelerators targeting light atoms and nuclei using high-power femtosecond laser pulses. Initially, we confine light atoms within the laser pulse envelope due to longitudinal polarization…
We show that the precise preparation of a quantum superposition between three rotational states of an ultracold dipolar molecule generates controllable interferences in their two-body scattering dynamics and collisional rate coefficients,…
The mutual angle formed by the non-collinear polarization axes of two laser pulses is used to control two-photon XUV+IR ionization of noble gas atoms in the process of reconstruction of attosecond bursts by beating of two-photon transitions…
Femtosecond coherent multidimensional spectroscopy is demonstrated for an ultracold gas. For this, a setup for phase modulation spectroscopy is used to probe the $3^2\mathrm{S}_{1/2} - 2^2\mathrm{P}_{1/2, 3/2}$ transition in an 800…
The production of molecules from dual species atomic quantum gases has enabled experiments that employ molecules at nanoKelvin temperatures. As a result, every degree of freedom of these molecules is in a well-defined quantum state and…
Energy coupling during relativistically intense laser-matter interactions is encoded in the attosecond motion of strongly driven electrons at the pre-formed plasma-vacuum boundary. Studying and controlling this motion can reveal details…
We experimentally investigate various processes present in the photoassociative interaction of an ultracold atomic sample with shaped femtosecond laser pulses. We demonstrate the photoassociation of pairs of rubidium atoms into…
Techniques for producing cold and ultracold molecules are enabling the study of chemical reactions and scattering at the quantum scattering limit, with only a few partial waves contributing to the incident channel, leading to the…
We show that products of the isotopic substitution reactions in experimentally accessible molecules such as NaK, RbCs, and SrF are cold according to their translational energy below hundreds of mK. For these chemical reactions, molecular…
We present an analysis of two experimental approaches to controlling the directionality of molecular rotation with ultrashort laser pulses. The two methods are based on the molecular interaction with either a pair of pulses (a "double kick"…