Gaining Insights into Laser Pulse Shaping by Evolution Strategies

We consider the numerical evolutionary optimization of dynamic molecular alignment by shaped femtosecond laser pulses. We study a simplified model of this quantum control problem, which allows the full physical investigation of the optimal solutions. By using specific variants of Derandomized Evolution Strategies, subject to parameterizations which are known to be superior for this problem, the numerical results reveal different conceptual physics structures for the different optimization procedures. These results are strong both from the algorithmic as well as from the physics perspectives. This shows that Natural Computing techniques can be used to derive new insights into Physics.