Light-induced conical intersections: topological phase, wave packet dynamics, and molecular alignment

Gábor J Halász; Milan Šindelka; Nimrod Moiseyev; Lorenz S Cederbaum; Ágnes Vibók

doi:10.1021/jp206860p

Light-induced conical intersections: topological phase, wave packet dynamics, and molecular alignment

J Phys Chem A. 2012 Mar 22;116(11):2636-43. doi: 10.1021/jp206860p. Epub 2011 Nov 1.

Authors

Gábor J Halász¹, Milan Šindelka, Nimrod Moiseyev, Lorenz S Cederbaum, Ágnes Vibók

Affiliation

¹ Department of Information Technology, University of Debrecen, PO Box 12, H-4010 Debrecen, Hungary.

PMID: 22043872
DOI: 10.1021/jp206860p

Abstract

In previous publications (J. Phys. B: At., Mol. Opt. Phys.2008, 41, 221001; J. Phys. B: At., Mol. Opt. Phys. 2011, 44, 045603) a novel and physically interesting phenomenon was found in the field of light-matter interactions. It was shown theoretically that exposing a molecule to a laser field can give rise to the appearance of so-called light-induced conical intersections (LICIs). The existence of such LICIs may change significantly the field free physical properties of a molecular system. In this article we review the LICIs in diatomics and provide a new insight to the LICI phenomenon. The sodium dimer is chosen as an explicit sample system. We calculated the Berry phase for a contour that surrounds the point of LICI and found it to be π, which is the same value as for the case of a "natural" CI in triatomic or larger molecules. We also present results to stress the impact of LICIs on molecular wave packet dynamics and molecular alignment in different electronic states.