Laser-selective chemistry and vibrational energy redistribution in molecules

I present new experimental results that are relevant to how vibrational energy is redistributed in large molecules. In these experiments the molecules are cooled (by supersonic beam expansion or by low temperature (1.7 K) crystal techniques) and the vibrational states are excited selectively by optical pulses of approximately 15 ps duration. When combined with high resolution spectroscopic data, the results of these experiments tell us the energy and phase relaxation time scales. The relevance of these and other findings to laser-selective chemistry is discussed