Jl. Herek et al., FEMTOSECOND CONTROL OF AN ELEMENTARY UNIMOLECULAR REACTION FROM THE TRANSITION-STATE REGION, Chemical physics letters, 228(1-3), 1994, pp. 15-25
We present a simple example of temporal control of the evolving dynami
cs in a reactive system - a unimolecular reaction with two channels. U
sing three femtosecond pulses, a wave packet is prepared, probed, and
intercepted in the transition-state region. The femtosecond control pu
lse intercepts the predissociative system at a fixed time and internuc
lear separation, both determined by the 'window' of the laser pulse. E
xperiments are performed on the NaI system which is a prototype for st
udies of elementary nuclear motion and reaction dynamics along two pot
entials, the covalent (Na+I) and the ionic (Na++I-) channels.