English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Short laser pulses are widely used for controlling molecular rotational degrees of freedom and inducing molecular alignment, orientation, unidirectional rotation, and other types of coherent rotational motion. To follow the ultrafast rotational dynamics in real time, several techniques for producing molecular movies have been proposed based on the Coulomb explosion of rotating molecules, or recovering molecular orientation from the angular distribution of high harmonics. The present work offers and demonstrates a novel nondestructive optical method for direct visualization and recording of movies of coherent rotational dynamics in a molecular gas. The technique is based on imaging the time‐dependent polarization dynamics of a probe light propagating through a gas of coherently rotating molecules. The probe pulse continues through a radial polarizer, and is then recorded by a camera. The technique is illustrated by implementing it with two examples of time‐resolved rotational dynamics: alignment–antialignment cycles in a molecular gas excited by a single linearly polarized laser pulse, and unidirectional molecular rotation induced by a pulse with twisted polarization. This method may open new avenues in studies on fast chemical transformation phenomena and ultrafast molecular dynamics caused by strong laser fields of various complexities.

Optical Imaging of Coherent Molecular Rotors