Orienting Asymmetric Molecules by Laser Fields with Skewed Polarization

Abstract

We study interaction of generic asymmetric molecules with a pair of strong time-delayed short laser pulses with crossed linear polarizations. We show that such an excitation not only provides unidirectional rotation of the most polarizable molecular axis, but also induces a directed torque along this axis, which results in the transient orientation of the molecules. The asymmetric molecules are chiral in nature and different molecular enantiomers experience the orienting action in opposite directions causing out-of-phase oscillation of their dipole moments. The resulting microwave radiation was recently suggested to be used for analysis/discrimination of chiral molecular mixtures. We reveal the mechanism behind this laser induced orientation effect, show that it is classical in nature, and envision further applications of light with skewed polarization.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (10)

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Cited by in corpus (21)

• Quantum control of molecular rotation
• Ultrafast chirality: the road to efficient chiral measurements
• Controlled enantioselective orientation of chiral molecules with an optical centrifuge
• Principles of enantio-selective excitation in three-wave mixing spectroscopy of chiral molecules
• Selective Orientation of Chiral Molecules by Laser Fields with Twisted Polarization
• Field-free Three-Dimensional Orientation of Asymmetric-Top Molecules
• Observation of persistent orientation of chiral molecules by laser field with twisted polarization
• Fast enantioconversion of chiral mixtures based on a four-level double-$\Delta$ model
• Laser induced persistent orientation of chiral molecules
• Enantioselective Orientation of Chiral Molecules Induced by Terahertz Pulses with Twisted Polarization
• Spatial enantioseparation of gaseous chiral molecules
• Optical imaging of coherent molecular rotors
• Three Dimensional Orientation of Complex Molecules Excited by Two-Color Femtosecond Pulses
• Enantio-specific state transfer for symmetric-top chiral molecules
• Molecular Orientation-Induced Second Harmonic Generation: deciphering different contributions apart
• Echo-enhanced molecular orientation at high temperatures
• Enantioselective chiral orientation induced by a combination of a long and a short laser pulse
• Long-Lasting Orientation of Symmetric-top Molecules Excited by Two-Color Femtosecond Pulses
• Optimal Selective Orientation of Chiral Molecules Using Femtosecond Laser Pulses
• Inducing enantiosensitive permanent multipoles in isotropic samples with two-color fields
• Numerical evaluation of orientation averages and its application to molecular physics