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Science 1 March 2002:
Vol. 295. no. 5560, pp. 1659 - 1660
DOI: 10.1126/science.1068449
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Perspectives

LASER CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS:
The Next Frontier

Kaoru Yamanouchi

High-intensity lasers are opening up a new realm of light-matter interactions. In his Perspective, Yamanouchi reviews recent progress in this field, focusing on two intensity regimes: the Coulombic regime, which mostly deforms molecular structures and causes tunneling ionization, and the relativistic regime, where high-intensity lasers produce x-rays and high-energy particles and may cause nuclear fusion reactions. Efforts are under way to increase laser intensity further for accessing the next frontier.

The author is in the Department of Chemistry, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan. E-mail: kaoru{at}chem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)