Controlling the Electrons Provides Means for Controlling Chemistry

Waveform control of orientation-dependent ionization of DCl in few-cycle laser fields

“…1 Ultimately this is expected to provide means for controlling chemical processes. 2 The generation of laser pulses with a well-defined electric field waveform E(t) = E 0 (t)cos(ot + j), with envelope E 0 (t) and frequency o, became possible by the stabilization of the carrier envelope phase (CEP) j. CEP-stable few-cycle pulses have been applied to the control of electron localization in the dissociative ionization of the prototype molecules D 2 , 3,4 HD 4 and H 2 . 5 After initial ionization, these systems only contain a single electron.…”

Pump and probe ultrafast electron dynamics in LiH: a computational study

“…It is shown that even at the high powers required to pump a sizeable fraction of molecules it is possible to maintain tight control over the dynamics of the electrons. Other recent studies of ultrafast processes include the work on localization of electrons by the laser pulse [46]- [48], on LiCN [49], on inducing ring currents [50,51], on the importance of correlation effects in charge migration [52]- [54] and on other intense field effects on molecules [55]- [66]. We pay special attention to the control of the electron dynamics that is allowed by the physical parameters of the pump and to the probing of the resulting coherent motion.…”

Attochemistry: Is Controlling Electrons the Future of Photochemistry?

“…[20][21][22] If chemistry is defined as the science of breaking and forming chemical bonds, then controlling the electrons responsible for the bonds is the most fundamental way of doing chemistry. 23,24 This is the true goal of attochemistry -to directly control bonding by steering the attosecond electron dynamics in molecules. Attochemistry relies on the following central concept: pulses of extremely short duration have also a large spectral bandwidth, and can therefore be used to coherently populate several electronic excited states of a molecule, referred to as an "electronic wavepacket".…”