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AMPD: EPS AMPD

AMPD 7: Sitzung 7

AMPD 7.2: Talk

Thursday, April 5, 2001, 10:55–11:30, H105

Femtosecond laser–molecule interactions — •Ian D. Williams — Physics Department, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK

The continual development of high power (> 10¹³ W/cm²), short pulse (< 100 fs) lasers, coupled with advances in experimentation have opened up new areas of study in the behaviour of matter in strong fields. Over the past decade this has led to the elucidation of phenomena such as above threshold dissociation, bond softening and bond hardening in molecules, as well as the emission of highly energetic ions and coherent X–rays from rare gas clusters.

By far the greatest effort to date has been expended on both experimental and theoretical studies of the hydrogen molecule, this being the simplest neutral molecular system. Studies prior to 1995 have been comprehensively reviewed by Giusti–Suzor et al. [1]. However experiments are complicated by the need to de–couple the initial ionisation of the molecule from the fragmentation dynamics of the resulting molecular ion. In an attempt to address this issue experiments have recently been reported where the target consists of a prepared beam of molecular hydrogen ions [2,3]. The talk will report on post 1995 developments with neutral hydrogen targets, as well as the newer studies with ionic targets.

[1] Giusti-Suzor A et al. 1995, J. Phys. B 28, 309-339.

[2] Williams ID et al. 2000, J. Phys. B 33, 2743-2752.

[3] Sandig K et al. 2000, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 4876-4879.