Alignment and orientation of an adsorbed dipole molecule

Liao, Y. Y.; Chen, Y. N.; Chuu, D. S.

Alignment and orientation of an adsorbed dipole molecule

Authors

Liao, Y. Y.

Chen, Y. N.

Chuu, D. S.

Description

Half-cycle laser pulse is applied on an absorbed molecule to investigate its alignment and orientation behavior. Crossover from field-free to hindered rotation motion is observed by varying the angel of hindrance of potential well. At small hindered angle, both alignment and orientation show sinusoidal-like behavior because of the suppression of higher excited states. However, mean alignment decreases monotonically as the hindered angle is increased, while mean orientation displays a minimum point at certain hindered angle. The reason is attributed to the symmetry of wavefunction and can be explained well by analyzing the coefficients of eigenstates.
4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. B (2004)