Laser-assisted molecular alignment in a strongly dissipative environment

This paper shows that transient alignment of linear molecules in a dense collisional environment can result from the formation of trapped aligned "dark" states in a laser field constituting either a comb of resonant short pulses or a sinusoidally frequency-modulated wave with a continuous flux. Simulation of the laser-induced dynamics of CO molecules reveals that the latter approach is effective at room temperature and requires three orders of magnitude less laser intensity compared to known alignment techniques.