Experimental demonstration of an optical centrifuge for molecules

摘要

Strong field molecular optics aims to control the position, velocity and acceleration, as well as the alignment, angular velocity and angular acceleration of a molecule. Molecular optics shares position control with atomic optics and optical tweezers. Rotation and dissociation are a distinctly molecular processes. Our experiments demonstrate that an extremely strong torque can be applied to a molecule, accelerating it to rotational energy sufficient to break it by the centrifugal force in just 50 ps.