Related papers: Coherent control of molecular rotation in superflu…
Molecules immersed in liquid helium are excellent probes of superfluidity. Their electronic, vibrational and rotational dynamics provide valuable clues about the superfluid at the nanoscale. Here we report on the experimental study of the…
We experimentally demonstrate that the rotation of molecules embedded in helium nanodroplets can be controlled with an optical centrifuge, allowing for the study of molecular dynamics inside the strongly interacting many-body environment of…
The control of ultrafast molecular rotational motion has benefited from the development of innovative techniques in strong-field laser physics. Here, we theoretically demonstrate a novel type of coherent control by inducing rotation of an…
We combine experimental and theoretical approaches to explore excited rotational states of molecules embedded in helium nanodroplets using CS$_2$ and I$_2$ as examples. Laser-induced nonadiabatic molecular alignment is employed to measure…
We present a simple quantum mechanical model describing excited rotational states of molecules in superfluid helium nanodroplets, as recently studied in non-adiabatic molecular alignment experiments [Cherepanov et al., Phys. Rev. A 104,…
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"…
Laser control of molecular rotation is an area of active research. A number of recent studies has aimed at expanding the reach of rotational control to extreme, previously inaccessible rotational states, as well as controlling the…
This paper presents an analysis of a model problem, consisting of two interacting rigid rings, for the rotation of molecules in liquid $^4$He. Due to Bose symmetry, the excitation of the rotor corresponding to a ring of N helium atoms is…
Metastable helium molecules generated in a discharge near a sharp tungsten tip operated in either pulsed mode or continuous field-emission mode in superfluid liquid $^{4}$He are imaged using a laser-induced-fluorescence technique. By…
We investigate theoretically the ability of an optical centrifuge - a laser pulse whose linear polarization is rotating at an accelerated rate, to control molecular rotation in the regime when the rigid-rotor approximation breaks down due…
We show that a 450 fs nonresonant, moderately intense, linearly polarized laser pulse can induce field-free molecular axis alignment of methyliodide molecules dissolved in a helium nanodroplet. Time-resolved measurements reveal rotational…
Trains of ultrashort laser pulses separated by the time of rotational revival (typically, tens of picoseconds) have been exploited for creating ensembles of aligned molecules. In this work we introduce a chiral pulse train - a sequence of…
Rotational dynamics of D$_2$ molecules inside helium nanodroplets is induced by a moderately intense femtosecond (fs) pump pulse and measured as a function of time by recording the yield of HeD$^+$ ions, created through strong-field…
We introduce a new scheme for controlling the sense of molecular rotation. By varying the polarization and the delay between two ultrashort laser pulses, we induce unidirectional molecular rotation, thereby forcing the molecules to rotate…
The fact, that $^4$He atoms on different concentric circular paths around the axis of a quantum vortex move with identically equal angular momentum, which represents an important aspect of superfluidity of He-II, has been used to discover a…
Iodine (I$_2$) molecules embedded in He nanodroplets are aligned by a 160 ps long laser pulse. The highest degree of alignment, occurring at the peak of the pulse and quantified by $\langle \cos^2 \theta_{2D} \rangle$, is measured as a…
We have studied the interaction of metastable $^4$He$_2^*$ excimer molecules with quantized vortices in superfluid $^4$He in the zero temperature limit. The vortices were generated by either rotation or ion injection. The trapping diameter…
We present data that show a cycling transition can be used to detect and image metastable He$_2$ triplet molecules in superfluid helium. We demonstrate that limitations on the cycling efficiency due to the vibrational structure of the…
Using a high-sensitivity torsional oscillator technique, we mapped the rotational and relaxational dynamics of solid helium-4 throughout the parameter range of the proposed supersolidity. We found evidence that the same microscopic…
The irrotational nature of superfluid helium was discovered through its decoupling from the container under rotation. Similarly, the resonant period drop of a torsional oscillator (TO) containing solid helium was first interpreted as the…