Multiple-Photon Excitation and Dissociation of Polyatomic Molecules

In the early 1970s, researchers in Canada, the Soviet Union and the United States discovered that powerful infrared laser pulses are capable of dissociating mole- cules such as SiF4 and SF6' This result, which was so unexpected that for some time the phenomenon of multiple-photon dissociation was not recognized in many cir- cumstances in which we now know that it occurs, was first publicized at a time when the possibility of using lasers for the separation of isotopes had attracted much att...