Nuclear interference in dissociating of HD+ in ultrashort laser fields.

The dissociation dynamics of HD+ molecules is studied theoretically by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation in which the molecular vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom are included. Based on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, the ground 1sσ8 state and the excited 2pσu state are taken into account, corresponding to two dissociative channels HD+ → D + H+ and HD+ → H + D+, respectively. Two dissociative nuclear wave packets overlap and interfere after excited by two ultrashort laser pulses. The interference patterns can be controlled by varying the laser parameters and the dissociation probabilities are demonstrated for different laser fields. The kinetic energy-dependent distributions of the fragments are calculated using an asymptotic-flow expression in the momentum space. The branching ratio D+/(H+ + D+), as a function of the delay time and the relative phase between two laser pulses, is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]