Sub-cycle steering of the deprotonation of acetylene by intense few-cycle mid-infrared laser fields

Li, H.; Kling, Nora G.; Gaumnitz, T.; Burger, C.; Siemering, R.; Schötz, J.; Liu, Q.; Ban, L.; Pertot, Y.; Wu, J.; Azzeer, A. M.; Vivie-Riedle, R. de; Wörner, H. J. and Kling, M. F. (2017): Sub-cycle steering of the deprotonation of acetylene by intense few-cycle mid-infrared laser fields. In: Optics Express, Vol. 25, No. 13: pp. 14192-14203

Abstract

Directional breaking of the C-H/C-D molecular bond is manipulated in acetylene (C2H2) and deuterated acetylene (C2D2) by waveform controlled few-cycle mid-infrared laser pulses with a central wavelength around 1.6 mu m at an intensity of about 8 x 10(13) W/cm(2). The directionality of the deprotonation of acetylene is controlled by changing the carrier-envelope phase (CEP). The CEP-control can be attributed to the laser-induced superposition of vibrational modes, which is sensitive to the sub-cycle evolution of the laser waveform. Our experiments and simulations indicate that near-resonant, intense mid-infrared pulses permit a higher degree of control of the directionality of the reaction compared to those obtained in near-infrared fields, in particular for the deuterated species. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Chemistry and Pharmacy > Department of Chemistry
• Subjects: 500 Science > 540 Chemistry
• ISSN: 1094-4087
• Language: English