Controlling the formation of excited neutral D$^{*}$ fragments of D$_2$ using intense ultrashort laser pulses*

Excited neutral D$^{*}$ fragments ($n\gg$1) are produced by the interaction of strong-field laser pulses with D$_2$ molecules. In this work, we focus on the formation of low kinetic energy release (KER) D$^{*}$ fragments, which are relatively unstudied, using NIR (800-nm) and UV (400-nm) laser pulses. The KER spectrum is found to be very sensitive to the laser parameters, including laser chirp. By changing the chirp of the UV laser pulses, two separate low-KER peaks are generated instead of a single peak. Moreover, the ratio between these peaks can be controlled with the chirp. Similarly, by chirping the NIR pulses, the low-KER peak is attenuated and shifted to lower energy.