Adiabatic Mixed-Field Orientation of Ground-State-Selected Carbonyl Sulfide Molecules

Jens S Kienitz; Sebastian Trippel; Terry Mullins; Karol Długołęcki; Rosario González-Férez; Jochen Küpper

doi:10.1002/cphc.201600710

Adiabatic Mixed-Field Orientation of Ground-State-Selected Carbonyl Sulfide Molecules

Chemphyschem. 2016 Nov 18;17(22):3740-3746. doi: 10.1002/cphc.201600710. Epub 2016 Sep 26.

Authors

Jens S Kienitz^{1

2}, Sebastian Trippel^{1

2}, Terry Mullins¹, Karol Długołęcki¹, Rosario González-Férez³, Jochen Küpper^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL), Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Notkestrasse 85, 22607, Hamburg, Germany.
² The Hamburg Center for Ultrafast Imaging, University of Hamburg, Luruper Chaussee 149, 22761, Hamburg, Germany.
³ Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional and Departamento de Física Atómica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain.
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Hamburg, Luruper Chaussee 149, 22761, Hamburg, Germany.

PMID: 27538031
DOI: 10.1002/cphc.201600710

Abstract

A strong adiabatic mixed-field orientation (N_up /N_tot =0.882) of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) molecules in their absolute ground state is experimentally demonstrated. OCS is oriented in a combination of nonresonant laser and static electric fields inside a two-plate velocity map imaging spectrometer. The transition from nonadiabatic to adiabatic orientation for the rotational ground state is studied by varying the applied laser intensity and static electric field. Above static electric field strengths of 10 kV cm^-1 and laser intensities of 10¹¹ W cm^-2 the observed degree of orientation reaches a plateau. These results are in good agreement with computational solutions of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation.

Keywords: adiabatic dynamics; laser chemistry; laser spectroscopy; mixed-field orientation; velocity map imaging.