Enhancing the intense field control of molecular fragmentation

Abstract

We describe a pump-probe scheme with which the spatial asymmetry of dissociating molecular fragments—as controlled by the carrier-envelope phase of an intense few-cycle laser pulse—can be enhanced by an order of magnitude or more. We illustrate the scheme using extensive, full-dimensional calculations for dissociation of H[subscript 2][superscript +] and include the averaging necessary for comparison with experiment.