Abstract

Laserlight brought the promise of adding antoher tool of manipulating processes in matter beyond simple excitation processes. Although trivial at the radiofrequencies used in NMR, femtosecond lasers and subsequently pulse shapers were needed to make coherent control possible in the optical part of the spectrum. I will describe three types of experiments that employ modificatio nof electromagentic pulses in ordrto affect excitation probabilities in atomic and molecular systens in a rather non-intuiive way.