Coherent Control in the Presence of Intrinsic Decoherence: Proton Transfer in Large Molecular Systems

An efficient semiclassical approach is developed and used to calculate the coherent-control map and time dependent decoherence measure for the excited-state proton transfer dynamics associated with the keto-enolic tautomerization reaction of 2-(2'-hydroxyphenyl)-oxazole. The method extends the usual bichromatic coherent-control scenario to simulate control at finite times after photoexcitation of the system. Extensive coherent control is demonstrated in a large molecule despite the ultrafast decoherence phenomena, providing results of broad theoretical and experimental interest.