| Laser selective chemistry is a field motivated by the desire to control the outcome of chemical reactions. The work presented herein describes research performed toward this end with the goal of developing techniques for practical and economic purposes. It consists of two experiments: (1) An experiment demonstrating the possibility of changing configurations of excited barium atoms using electric fields—a novel approach to coherent control, one of the currently pursued approaches to laser selective chemistry. (2) Experiments demonstrating the possibility of altering the lifetime of a molecule by subjecting excited states of nitric oxide to microwave, radio-frequency, and static electric fields. |
