National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 3(111), p. 912-917, 2014
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Significance We show that we can precisely control molecular dynamics on both nuclear (i.e., femtosecond) and electronic (i.e., attosecond) timescales. By using attosecond vacuum UV light pulse trains that are tunable in the frequency domain, we show that it is possible to switch population between electronically excited states of a neutral molecule on attosecond time scales, and use this ability to coherently control excitation and ionization through specific pathways. This paper represents a milestone advance because almost two decades after attosecond physics was demonstrated, attosecond chemistry has not yet been fully established because the wavelength and bandwidth of attosecond pulses did not well match molecular quantum states. The richness and complexity of the dynamics, even in a simple molecule, is remarkable and daunting.