Hamburg 2009 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 25: Interaction with Strong or Short Laser Pulses III
A 25.3: Talk
Thursday, March 5, 2009, 11:00–11:15, VMP 8 R208
Shaping and application of picosecond-length laser pulses — •Terry Mullins1, Simone Goetz1, Magnus Albert2, Wenzel Salzmann3, Brett DePaola4, Roland Wester5, and Matthias Weidemueller1 — 1Universitaet Heidelberg — 2Aarhus Universitet — 3Fraunhofer IPM Freiburg — 4Kansas State University — 5Universitaet Freiburg
Picosecond-length pulses have a bandwidth which is well suited to study processes taking place over an energy range of a few tens of wavenumbers, while concurrently offering time resolution in the picosecond range. While suitably high-resolution pulse-shapers exist for femtosecond-length pulses [1,2], and are relatively straightforward to build, designing and building a pulse-shaper with suitably high resolution for picosecond pulses is more difficult. The smaller bandwidth means longer path-lengths through the shaper optics are usually required, leading to large devices. We have overcome these problems and developed a compact, suitably high-resolution shaper. One example of a process well-suited to picosecond pulses is the photoassociation of ultracold atoms [3,4], which is most efficient within a few tens of wavenumbers from the dissociation limit, and typically having vibrational dynamics in the tens of picoseconds range. We discuss the application of shaped picosecond pulses to this process.
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