Experimental demonstration of an optical centrifuge for molecules

Summary form only given. Strong field molecular optics aims to control the position, velocity and acceleration, as well as the alignment, angular velocity and angular acceleration of a molecule. Molecular optics shares position control with atomic optics and optical tweezers. Rotation and dissociation are a distinctly molecular processes. Our experiments demonstrate that an extremely strong torque can be applied to a molecule, accelerating it to rotational energy sufficient to break it by the centrifugal force in just 50 ps. The physics on which the molecular centrifuge is based is the angle dependent Stark shift. For small molecules the well depth can exceed 50 meV. That is, even room temperature molecules can be trapped. Adiabatically rotating the laser polarization must rotate the trapped molecule. Accelerating the rotation of the laser polarization must accelerate the molecular rotation. We have studied three different molecules, Cl/sub 2/, O/sub 2/ and CS/sub 2/ with most work performed on Cl/sub 2/.