Perspective: Preservation of coherence in photophysical processes

Abstract

Coherence is one of the most important phenomena in ultrafast sciences. We give our perspective on the terminology, observation, and preservation of coherence in photophysical processes with some glimpses to the past and some looking-head to what may pave the way for scaling one of the last bastions in ultrafast science, namely, that of mode specific chemistry where it will be possible to break any specific bond by tailoring the pulse, an accomplishment that obviously would be the dream of any chemist.