TY  - JOUR
AU  - Mullins, Terry
AU  - Karamatskos, Evangelos Thomas
AU  - Wiese, Joss
AU  - Onvlee, Jolijn
AU  - Rouzée, Arnaud
AU  - Yachmenev, Andrey
AU  - Trippel, Sebastian
AU  - Küpper, Jochen
TI  - Picosecond pulse-shaping for strong three-dimensional field-free alignment of generic asymmetric-top molecules
JO  - Nature Communications
VL  - 13
IS  - 1
SN  - 2041-1723
CY  - [London]
PB  - Nature Publishing Group UK
M1  - PUBDB-2022-01584
M1  - arXiv:2009.08157
SP  - 1431
PY  - 2022
AB  - Fixing molecules in space is a crucial step for the imaging of molecular structure and dynamics. Here, we demonstrate three-dimensional (3D) field-free alignment of the proto- typical asymmetric top molecule indole using elliptically polarized, shaped, off-resonant laser pulses. A truncated laser pulse is produced using a combination of extreme linear chirping and controlled phase and amplitude shaping using a spatial-light-modulator (SLM) based pulse shaper of a broadband laser pulse. The angular confinement is detected through velocity-map imaging of H<sup>+</sup> and C<sup>2+</sup> fragments resulting from strong-field ionization and Coulomb explosion of the aligned molecules by intense femtosecond laser pulses. The achieved three-dimensional alignment is characterized by comparing the result of ion- velocity-map measurements for different alignment directions and for different times during and after the alignment laser pulse to accurate computational results. The achieved strong three-dimensional field-free alignment of <cos<sup>2</sup>δ4> 0:89 demonstrates the feasibility of both, strong three-dimensional alignment of generic complex molecules and its quantitative characterization.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - 35301292
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000770426200018
DO  - DOI:10.1038/s41467-022-28951-z
UR  - https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/476130
ER  -