Shine a light: a circular dichroism effect in the ±10 % regime on randomly oriented chiral molecules in the gas phase is demonstrated. The signal is derived from images of photoelectron angular distributions produced by resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization and allows the enantiomers to be distinguished. To date, this effect could only be generated with a synchrotron source. The new tabletop laser-based approach will make this approach far more accessible.

The kinetics of the title reaction were investigated between 202 and 395 K and at 20, 50, and 100 Torr of Ar or N 2 bath gas using pulsed laser photolysis (PLP) generation of OH combined with both resonance fluorescence (RF) and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) detection. OH was generated either by the sequential 439 nm, two-photon dissociation of NO 2 in the presence of H 2 , or by HONO photolysis at 351 nm. The accuracy of the rate constants obtained was enhanced by optical absorption measurements of acetone concentrations both before and after the photolysis reactor. The temperature dependence is not described by a simple Arrhenius expression but by k 1 (202-395 K) ) 8.8 × 10 -12 exp(-1320/T) + 1.7 × 10 -14 exp(423/T) cm 3 s -1 , indicating that a simple H atom abstraction may not be the only reaction mechanism. The estimated total error (95% confidence) associated with the rate coefficient derived from this expression is estimated as 5% and is independent of temperature. The curvature in the Arrhenius plot results in a significantly larger rate coefficient at low temperatures than obtained by extrapolation of the previous measurement and implies greater significance for the reaction with OH as a sink for acetone in the upper troposphere than presently assumed.

Photoelectron circular dichroism (PECD) is a CD effect up to the ten-percent regime and shows contributions from higher-order Legendre polynomials when multiphoton ionization is compared to single-photon ionization. We give a full account of our experimental methodology for measuring the multiphoton PECD and derive quantitative measures that we apply on camphor, fenchone and norcamphor. Different modulations and amplitudes of the contributing Legendre polynomials are observed despite the similarity in chemical structure. In addition, we study PECD for elliptically polarized light employing tomographic reconstruction methods. Intensity studies reveal dissociative ionization as the origin of the observed PECD effect, whereas ionization of the intermediate resonance is dominating the signal. As a perspective, we suggest to make use of our tomographic data as an experimental basis for a complete photoionization experiment and give a prospect of PECD as an analytic tool.

We demonstrate that the use of time-dependent light polarization opens a new level of control over quantum systems. With potassium dimer molecules from a supersonic molecular beam, we show that a polarization-shaped laser pulse increases the ionization yield beyond that obtained with an optimally shaped linearly polarized laser pulse. This is due to the different multiphoton ionization pathways in K2 involving dipole transitions which favor different polarization directions of the exciting laser field. This experiment is a qualitative extension of quantum control mechanisms which opens up new directions giving access to the three-dimensional temporal response of molecular systems.

We review prototype studies in the area of quantum control with femtosecond lasers. We restrict this discussion to atoms and diatomics under gas-phase collision-free conditions to allow for a comparison between theory and experiment. Both the perturbative regime and the nonperturbative regime of the light-matter interaction are addressed. To that end, atomic/molecular beam techniques are combined together with femtosecond laser techniques and energy-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and ion detection. Highly detailed information on the laser-induced quantum dynamics is extracted with the help of kinetic energy-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy.