LASER CONTROL OF CHEMICAL REACTIONS: WHERE ARE WE AND WHERE ARE WE GOING?

This talk will present an overview of laser control of chemical reactions, with an emphasis on time-dependent methodologies. It will include a review of the pump-dump scheme, optimal control theory for design of optimally shaped laser pulses, learning algorithms, deciphering excited state potential energy surfaces from multiple-pulse spectroscopy and recent work toward controlling multielectron motion.