Raman generation by phased and antiphased states of molecular deuterium

Summary form only given. It has recently been shown that the ideas of frequency modulation (FM) and pulse compression can be extended to molecular oscillation frequencies, thereby allowing generation of subfemtosecond pulses. Here we present an experimental evidence for generation of a broad collinear FM spectrum, with modulation frequency equal to the fundamental vibrational frequency in molecular deuterium (D/sub 2/) and spectral contents extending over 50,000 cm. The generated spectrum consists of seventeen mutually coherent sidebands that range from 2.94 /spl mu/m to 195 nm in wavelength.