title: Observation of Bloch Oscillations in Molecular Rotation.
abstract: We report the observation of rotational Bloch oscillations in a gas of nitrogen molecules kicked by a periodic train of femtosecond laser pulses. A controllable detuning from the quantum resonance creates an effective accelerating potential in angular momentum space, inducing Bloch-like oscillations of the rotational excitation. These oscillations are measured via the temporal modulation of the refractive index of the gas. Our results introduce room-temperature laser-kicked molecules as a new laboratory for studies of localization phenomena in quantum transport.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, 234 Herzl Street, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Floß
authors.affiliation: Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA.
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kamalov
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, 234 Herzl Street, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
authors.forename: Ilya Sh
authors.initials: ISh
authors.lastname: Averbukh
authors.affiliation: Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA.
authors.forename: Philip H
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Bucksbaum