Molecular fragmentation driven by ultrafast dynamic ionic resonances.

The authors time resolve molecular motion in bound state, ionic potentials that leads to bond cleavage during the interaction with intense, ultrafast laser fields. Resonances in molecular ions play an important role in dissociative ionization with ultrafast laser fields, and the authors demonstrate how these resonances evolve in time to produce dissociation after initial strong-field ionization. Exploiting such dynamic resonances offers the possibility of controlled bond breaking and characterizing time-dependent molecular structure.