“…Advances achieved in pulse-shaping techniques opened new roads in the field, in particular concerning the control of chemical reactivity in complex systems. − However, the investigation of simple systems offers a possibility to learn how to use the control as a tool for analyzing the underlying processes. Therefore, metallic dimers − and diatomic molecules , have been studied in numerous contributions, since they are suitable model systems for verifying the scopes of different control schemes and they are accessible to experimental pulse shaping techniques. − Theoretical and experimental work using two-parameter control has been performed: In addition to the pump−probe time delay, the second control parameter involved the pump 10,21-22 and/or probe 11,14 wavelength, the pump−dump delay, ,− the laser power, the chirp, , or temporal width 19 of the laser pulse. Optimal pump−dump control of K 2 has been carried out theoretically in order to maximize the population of certain vibrational levels of the ground electronic state using one electronic excited state as an intermediate pathway. − Concerning optimal control for the maximization of the ionization yield in alkali dimers, the experimental work using evolutionary algorithms 26-32 has prompted the theoretical investigations presented here.…”