Using a direct perturbation method, we investigate the stability of a diatomic molecule modelled by a weakly laser-driven Morse oscillator. It is shown that stationary state solution of the system is stable in the sense of Lyapunov and the periodical one possesses conditional stability, namely its stability depends on the initial conditions and system parameters. The corresponding sufficient and necessary conditions are established that indicate the stable states associated with some discrete energies. The results reveal how a diatomic molecule can be stabilized or dissociated with a weak laser, and demonstrate that the mathematical conditional stability works in the considered physical system.
We investigate the quantum motion of two ions stored in a Paul trap and interacting with a time-periodic laser field. In the pseudopotential approximation and large detuning condition, we find that the relative motion is independent of the laser field, but the exact centre-of-mass motion is closely related to the laser field. By adjusting the laser intensity and frequency, we can well control the quantum motion of the centre-of-mass. We illustrate some physical properties described by the centre-of-mass states, such as the squeezed coherent property, the widths and heights of the wavepackets of probability density, the classical-quantum correspondence, the resonance ladders of expectation energy and the transition probabilities between time-dependent quantum levels.
