[Coherent control of photoabsorption processes and calculation of nonlinear optical processes]. Final technical report

The work on the grant for the entire period of its duration concentrated on two different but related areas, namely coherent control of photoabsorption processes and the calculation of non linear optical processes with short wavelength radiation. On the first topic, the work dealt with the problem of controlling the population transfer from one to another bound state of a system in a route that passes through a continuum. This question is most important in the context of transferring populations between vibrational states of a molecule through a sequence of two pulses taking the system via the dissociation continuum. On the second topic, their work was motivated by the availability of XUV and soft X-ray coherent radiation sources obtained through high order harmonic generation. In addition, a few other techniques based on schemes of photo-pumped X-ray lasers promise to provide in the near-future similarly coherent sources. It is thus important to have an assessment of the possibility of extending non-linear optical processes to this range of wavelengths. This means assessing the relevant magnitude of the susceptibilities for third harmonic generation, stimulated Raman scattering, two-photon absorption, etc.