Laser wave steers electrons in chemical bonds

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Control of the electron position in a D2 molecule: under the influence of a precisely controlled force exerted by an ultrashort intense phase-controlled laser (red line) the electron (blue cloud) oscillates between the two D ions (magenta curve). Whe ...
Control of the electron position in a D2+ molecule: under the influence of a precisely controlled force exerted by an ultrashort, intense phase-controlled laser (red line), the electron (blue cloud) oscillates between the two D+ ions (magenta curve). When the molecule falls apart the electron stays with one of the two D+ ions. The emission direction of the atom that the electron stays with can be chosen with the phase j of the laser. Image: Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics

As is now reported in Science, a team of scientists from the Netherlands (FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics) and Germany (Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics, Garching and the Universities of Bielefeld and Hamburg) has demonstrated that the detailed shape of the electric field inside a short light pulse can be used to control the motion of electrons involved in chemical bonding and to change the outcome of a simple chemical reaction. This result – obtained on the dissociation of D2 molecules – may open a new way of steering intra-molecular electron transfer processes like those in DNA base-pairs.


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