Dynamical Localization in Molecular Alignment of Kicked Quantum Rotors

Abstract: The periodically $\delta$-kicked quantum linear rotor is known to experience non-classical bounded energy growth due to quantum dynamical localization in angular momentum space. We study the effect of random deviations of the kick period in simulations and experiments. This breaks the energy and angular momentum localization and increases the rotational alignment, which is the analog of the onset of Anderson localization in 1-D chains.