%0 Electronic Article
%A Mullins, Terry
%A Karamatskos, Evangelos Thomas
%A Wiese, Joss
%A Onvlee, Jolijn
%A Rouzée, Arnaud
%A Yachmenev, Andrey
%A Trippel, Sebastian
%A Küpper, Jochen
%T Picosecond pulse-shaping for strong three-dimensional field-free alignment of generic asymmetric-top molecules
%N arXiv:2009.08157
%M PUBDB-2024-01858
%M arXiv:2009.08157
%D 2022
%X 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 prototypical 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>δ〉 = 0.89 demonstrates the feasibility of both, strong three-dimensional alignment of generic complex molecules and its quantitative characterization.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)25
%9 Preprint
%U https://bib-pubdb1.desy.de/record/607376