exposed to an intense laser pulse

摘要： We investigate the role of the rotational excitation in the coherent and unidirectional B 2Σ+u emission of N2+ at 391 nm called air lasing generated when N2 is irradiated with intense femtosecond near-infrared laser pulses at 800 nm. We simulate the time-dependent population transfer process of N2+, which is assumed to be generated suddenly in an intense ultrashort laser pulse, by including vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom, and reveal that, when the light field intensity is below ≈ 4 × 1014 W cm?2, the population inversion can be achieved in N2+ only between rotationally highly excited levels in the vibrational ground (v' = 0) state of the B 2Σ+u state and those in the vibrational ground (v'' = 0) state of the electronic ground X 2Σ+g state, so that the lasing at 391 nm is realized even when the total population in the v' = 0 state of the electronically excited B 2Σ+u state is not inverted with respect to the total population in the v'' = 0 state of the electronic ground X 2Σ+g state.