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Optics Letters

Controlled rotational Raman echo recurrences and modulation of high-intensity ultrashort laser pulses by molecular rotations in the gas phase

И. В. Федотов, A. D. Savvin, Andrei B. Fedotov, Aleksei M. Zheltikov

Published Apr 17, 2007• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that sequences of femtosecond laser pulses can control the rotational Raman response of a gas mixture, giving rise to a tunable manifold of echo recurrences in the retarded nonlinear-optical response of the gas. Tailored phase masks for high-intensity ultrashort laser pulses are experimentally demonstrated using molecular rotations in the gas phase driven by optimally time-ordered pulse sequences.

DOI
10.1364/ol.32.001275

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We show that sequences of femtosecond laser pulses can control the rotational Raman response of a gas mixture, giving rise to a tunable manifold of echo recurrences in the retarded nonlinear-optical response of the gas. Tailored phase masks for high-intensity ultrashort laser pulses are experimentally demonstrated using molecular rotations in the gas phase driven by optimally time-ordered pulse sequences.
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Unlike spontaneous Raman effect, nonlinear Raman scattering generates fields with a well-defined phase, allowing Raman signals from individual scatterers to add up into a highly directional, high-brightness coherent beam. Here, we show that the phase of coherent Raman scattering can be accurately controlled and finely tuned by using spectrally and temporally tailored optical driver fields. In our experiments, performed with spectrally optimized phase-tunable laser pulses, such a phase control is visualized through the interference of the coherent Raman signal with the field resulting from nonresonant four-wave mixing. This interference gives rise to Fano-type profiles in the overall nonlinear response measured as a function of the delay time between the laser pulses, featuring a well-resolved destructive-interference dip on the dark side of the Raman peak. This phase-control strategy is shown to radically enhance the coherent response from weak Raman modes, thus helping confront long-standing challenges in nonlinear Raman imaging and microspectroscopy.
We present an analysis of two experimental approaches to controlling the directionality of molecular rotation with ultrashort laser pulses. The two methods are based on the molecular interaction with either a pair of pulses (a ``double-kick'' scheme) or a longer pulse sequence (a ``chiral-pulse-train'' scheme). In both cases, rotational control is achieved by varying the polarization of and the time delay between the consecutive laser pulses. Using the technique of polarization-sensitive resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization, we show that both methods produce significant rotational directionality. We demonstrate that increasing the number of excitation pulses supplements the ability to control the sense of molecular rotation with quantum-state selectivity, i.e., predominant excitation of a single rotational state. We also demonstrate the ability of both techniques to generate counterrotation of molecular nuclear-spin isomers (here, ortho- and para-nitrogen) and molecular isotopologs (here, 14{}^{14}14N2{}_{2}2​ and 15{}^{15}15N2{}_{2}2​).
A technique is proposed to increase multiplicatively the pulse spacing of a periodic subfemtosecond-pulse train based on molecular modulation, with more pairs of driving lasers to control the higher-order stimulated Raman scattering. We demonstrate that the pulse spacing can be readily doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled by using pairs of off-resonant two-photon Raman transitions driven by laser beams of sufficient intensities and relatively shifted carrier frequencies. A periodic subfemtosecond-pulse train with a pulse width down to 0.53 fs and pulse spacing up to 376 fs can be generated with appropriate molecular coherence control of the fundamental rotational transition in molecular hydrogen.
We theoretically demonstrate that the molecular rotational state populations through an impulsive nonresonant Raman process can be manipulated by shaping the femtosecond laser pulse with a periodic phase-step modulation. We show that, by precisely controlling these parameters characterizing the periodic phase-step modulation, both the odd and even rotational state populations can be completely suppressed or reconstructed as that induced by the transform-limited laser pulse, and the relative excitation between the odd and even rotational state populations can also be obtained. Furthermore, we show that the field-free molecular alignment can be manipulated due to the modulation of the odd and even rotational state populations.
We have observed self-modulation and self-compression of a femtosecond laser pulse after passing the beam through a Raman-active medium of hydrogen. Femtosecond pulses produce Stokes emissions of ortho-hydrogen and para-hydrogen, depending on the input beam conditions. The shape of the output pulses drastically changed as a function of the intensity of the Stokes emissions and the total width of the spectrum. This is attributed to nonlinear modulation of the wave form induced by coherent rotational motions of hydrogen molecules in the time domain.