WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM THE PHASE LAG IN COHERENT CONTROL EXPERIMENTS?
In coherent control experiments the product signal intensity is modulated by interference between two excitation paths. This modulation is produced by varying the relative phase of the electromagnetic fields used to excited the target. It is observed that the modulated signals for different channels may be out of phase with respect to each other. The phase lag between different channels is energy dependent and contains information about the dynamics of the system. This paper explores different mechanisms that produce such phase lags and assesses what may be learned from them.