No Arabic abstract
Abstract We report the experimental observation of molecular unidirectional rotation (UDR) echoes, and analyze their origin and behavior both classically and quantum mechanically. The molecules are excited by two time-delayed polarization-twisted ultrashort laser pulses and the echoes are measured by exploding the molecules and reconstructing their spatial orientation from the detected recoil ions momenta. Unlike alignment echoes which are induced by linearly polarized pulses, here the axial symmetry is broken by the twisted polarization, giving rise to molecular unidirectional rotation. We find that the rotation sense of the echo is governed by the twisting sense of the second pulse even when its intensity is much weaker than the intensity of the first pulse. In our theoretical study, we rely on classical phase space analysis and on three-dimensional quantum simulations of the laser-driven molecular dynamics. Both approaches nicely reproduce the experimental results. Echoes in general, and the unique UDR echoes in particular, provide new tools for studies of relaxation processes in dense molecular gases.
Synchronization is of great scientific interest due to the abundant applications in a wide range of systems. We propose a scheme to achieve the controllable long-distance synchronization of two dissimilar optomechanical systems, which are unidirectionally coupled through a fiber with light. Synchronization, unsynchronization, and the dependence of the synchronization on driving laser strength and intrinsic frequency mismatch are studied based on the numerical simulation. Taking the fiber attenuation into account, its shown that two mechanical resonators can be synchronized over a distance of tens of kilometers. In addition, we also analyze the unidirectional synchronization of three optomechanical systems, demonstrating the scalability of our scheme.
Mountain echoes are a well-known phenomenon, where an impulse excitation is mirrored by the rocks to generate a replica of the original stimulus, often with reverberating recurrences. For spin echoes in magnetic resonance and photon echoes in atomic and molecular systems the role of the mirror is played by a second, time delayed pulse which is able to reverse the ow of time and recreate the original event. Recently, laser-induced rotational alignment and orientation echoes were introduced for molecular gases, and discussed in terms of rotational-phase-space filamentation. Here we present, for the first time, a direct spatiotemporal analysis of various molecular alignment echoes by means of coincidence Coulomb explosion imaging. We observe hitherto unreported spatially rotated echoes, that depend on the polarization direction of the pump pulses, and find surprising imaginary echoes at negative times.
We provide a theory of the deflection of polar and non-polar rotating molecules by inhomogeneous static electric field. Rainbow-like features in the angular distribution of the scattered molecules are analyzed in detail. Furthermore, we demonstrate that one may efficiently control the deflection process with the help of short and strong femtosecond laser pulses. In particular the deflection process may by turned-off by a proper excitation, and the angular dispersion of the deflected molecules can be substantially reduced. We study the problem both classically and quantum mechanically, taking into account the effects of strong deflecting field on the molecular rotations. In both treatments we arrive at the same conclusions. The suggested control scheme paves the way for many applications involving molecular focusing, guiding, and trapping by inhomogeneous fields.
We study photon echo generation in disordered media with the help of multiple scattering theory based on diagrammatic approach and numerical simulations. We show that a strong correlation exists between the driving fields at the origin of the echo and the echo beam. Opening the way to a better understanding of non-linear wave propagation in complex materials, this work supports recent experimental results with applications to the measurement of the optical dipole lifetime $T_2$ in powders.
Recently the phase space structures governing reaction dynamics in Hamiltonian systems have been identified and algorithms for their explicit construction have been developed. These phase space structures are induced by saddle type equilibrium points which are characteristic for reaction type dynamics. Their construction is based on a Poincar{e}-Birkhoff normal form. Using tools from the geometric theory of Hamiltonian systems and their reduction we show in this paper how the construction of these phase space structures can be generalized to the case of the relative equilibria of a rotational symmetry reduced $N$-body system. As rotations almost always play an important role in the reaction dynamics of molecules the approach presented in this paper is of great relevance for applications.