Attosecond-recollision-controlled selective fragmentation of polyatomic molecules

Abstract

Control over various fragmentation reactions of a series of polyatomic molecules (acetylene, ethylene, 1,3-butadiene) by the optical waveform of intense few-cycle laser pulses is demonstrated experimentally. We show both experimentally and theoretically that the responsible mechanism is inelastic ionization from inner-valence molecular orbitals by recolliding electron wavepackets, whose recollision energy in few-cycle ionizing laser pulses strongly depends on the optical waveform. Our work demonstrates an efficient and selective way of pre-determining fragmentation and isomerization reactions in polyatomic molecules on sub-femtosecond time-scales.

References in corpus (1)

• Attosecond control of electron dynamics in carbon monoxide

Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Real-time probing electron dynamics of an atom in a strong infrared laser field
• The impact of the carrier envelope phase -- dependence on system and laser parameters