Manipulating bond lengths adiabatically with light

In this paper we propose a new method to manipulate bond lengths in molecules. The scheme uses strong fields that prepare an artificial potential with the desired equilibrium bond length, by controlling the mixing of electronic configurations, and finds an adiabatic path that connects the initial state with the laser created potential. As an illustration, we show that it is possible to control the bond length of a diatomic molecule by directly coupling the ground state and a dissociative potential, with the aid of a second excited bound potential.