Extracting the Polarizability Anisotropy from the Transient Alignment of HBr

We use 40 fs, 780 nm laser pulses to transiently align HBr molecules. We study the temporal dynamics of the resultant rotational wavepacket to gain insight into the electronic properties of the molecule. We show that the HBr polarization anisotropy can be extracted by comparing the time dependence of the HBr alignment with both the analogous alignment behavior of N(2) and the predictions of a rigid-rotor model.