Nonlinear Optical Response in Atoms Molecules And Clusters

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the effects of relativity in atoms, molecules and solids. On the one hand, this can be seen as result of the growing awareness of the importance of relativity in describing the properties of heavy atoms and systems containing them. This has been fueled by the inadequacy of physical models which either neglect relativity or which treat it as a small perturbation. On the other hand, it is dependent upon the technological developments which have resulted in computers powerful enough to make calculations on heavy atoms and on systems containing heavy atoms meaningful. Vector processing and, more recently, parallel processing techniques are playing an increasingly vital role in rendering the algorithms which arise in relativistic studies tractable. This has been exemplified in atomic structure theory, where the dominant role of the central nuclear charge simplifies the problem enough to permit some prediction to be made with high precision, especially for the highly ionized atoms of importance in plasma physics and in laser confinement studies. Today's sophisticated physical models of the atom derived from quantum electrodynamics would be intractable without recourse to modern computational machinery. Relativistic atomic structure calculations have a history dating from the early attempts of Swirles in the mid 1930's but continue to provide one of the primary test beds of modern theoretical physics.

The International Workshop on Coherent Control of Carrier Dynamics in Semiconductors was held May 19 to 22, 1998 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Its intent was to bring together an international and interdisciplinary group of scientists to discuss recent progress, pertinent problems, and open questions in the field of coherent control in atoms, molecules, and semiconductors, in particular. Twenty-seven scientists from the physical chemistry, quantum optics, semiconductor, electrical engineering, and laser communities accepted our invitation and made this event a meeting of exciting presentations and vivid discussions. This volume contains the proceedings of this workshop. Most speakers accepted our invitation to provide a manuscript either on specific aspects of their work or a brief review of their area of research. All manuscripts were reviewed. It is hoped that they provide not merely an overview of most of the issues covered during the workshop, but also represent an account of the current state of coherent control in general. Hence, it is hoped that they are also of interest to a large number of scientists active in one of the areas listed above. The organizers of this workshop would like to thank all the participants for making this meeting a complete success. We are particularly indebted to Dr. Larry R. Cooper at the U.S. Office of Naval Research and Dr.

This is the first volume of textbooks on atomic, molecular and optical physics, aiming at a comprehensive presentation of this highly productive branch of modern physics as an indispensable basis for many areas in physics and chemistry as well as in state of the art bio- and material-sciences. It primarily addresses advanced students (including PhD students), but in a number of selected subject areas the reader is lead up to the frontiers of present research.

This is the first volume of textbooks on atomic, molecular and optical physics, aiming at a comprehensive presentation of this highly productive branch of modern physics as an indispensable basis for many areas in physics and chemistry as well as in state of the art bio- and material-sciences. It primarily addresses advanced students (including PhD students), but in a number of selected subject areas the reader is lead up to the frontiers of present research.

This is the second volume of textbooks on atomic, molecular and optical physics, aiming at a comprehensive presentation of this highly productive branch of modern physics as an indispensable basis for many areas in physics and chemistry as well as in state of the art bio- and material-sciences. It primarily addresses advanced students (including PhD students), but in a number of selected subject areas the reader is lead up to the frontiers of present research. Thus even the active scientist is addressed. This volume 2 introduces lasers and quantum optics, while the main focus is on the structure of molecules and their spectroscopy, as well as on collision physics as the continuum counterpart to bound molecular states. The emphasis is always on the experiment and its interpretation, while the necessary theory is introduced from this perspective in a compact and occasionally somewhat heuristic manner, easy to follow even for beginners.