Abstract

Recent advances in femtosecond laser pulse generation have given rise to new powerful spectroscopic methods based on pumping and probing atoms and molecules with pulses short compared to the characteristic natural times for the systems. This made possible a real-time observation of vibrational motion in molecules, dynamics of Rydberg wave packets in atoms, excitation of coherent phonons in solids etc. [1,2]. Up to now this technique has been used mainly for studying the processes in quantum systems which develop after the short-pulse excitation, but has not been employed so far for a study of the dynamics of radiation-atom or radiation-molecule interactions themselves.

© 1996 IEEE