| Abstract: | Femtochemistry is about the investigation and control of ultrafast elementary molecular dynamics, which are the basis of every chemical reaction. The processes finally resulting in breaking of chemical bonds or molecular structure changes take place on a time scale of only femto to picoseconds. Solely femtosecond laser pulses are fast enough to resolve these fast processes. Different techniques were developed, which make use of a combination of femtosecond pulses having a relative temporal delay, in order to get access to the dynamics even in complex molecules. The knowledge of the elementary processes allows for a better understanding of the reaction mechanisms and their dependence on environmental conditions. The interaction with the molecules even before the final reaction path is entered, opens up new exciting possibilities for the control of chemical processes. A specific manipulation of the molecular dynamics using adapted pulse shapes appears to be realistic also for complex reactions and systems. The evolutionary optimization strategies, which exploit the experimental results as feedback, make selective chemistry come true even without knowledge of all system parameters. |
