title: Coherent nonlinear spectroscopy: from femtosecond dynamics to control.
abstract: This review focuses on the study of the dynamics of isolated molecules and their control using coherent nonlinear spectroscopic methods. Emphasis is placed on topics such as bound-to-free excitation and the study of concerted elimination reactions, free-to-bound excitation and the study of bimolecular reactions, and bound-to-bound excitation and the study of intramolecular rovibrational dynamics and coherence relaxation. For each case the detailed time-resolved information reveals possible strategies to control the outcome. Experimental results are shown for each of the reactions discussed. The methods discussed include pump-probe and four-wave mixing processes such as transient grating and photon echo spectroscopy. Off-resonance transient-grating experiments are shown to be ideal for the study of ground state dynamics, molecular structure, and the molecular response to strong field excitation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Center for Fundamental Materials Research, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA. dantus@msu.edu
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dantus