We demonstrate that strong impulsive gas heating or heating suppression at standard temperature and pressure can occur from coherent rotational excitation or de-excitation of molecular gases using a sequence of non-ionizing laser pulses. For the case of excitation, subsequent collisional decoherence of the ensemble leads to gas heating significantly exceeding that from plasma absorption under the same laser focusing conditions. In both cases, the macroscopic hydrodynamics of the gas can be finely controlled with ~40 fs temporal sensitivity.

5 pages, 4 figures