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Zap and the aromaticity is gone
Carefully tuned laser pulses can temporarily destroy benzene's aromaticity giving it a structure similar to that proposed by Kekulé © J. Am. Chem. Soc.
German chemists have shown that it's possible to turn off aromaticity with a blast from a laser beam. Tuning the frequency of the laser excites electrons from the ground state to a non-aromatic state of alternating single and double bonds.
Inga Ulusoy and Mathias Nest at the Technical University Munich, performed the work as part of a larger project in Nest's lab. 'This is the first step in a broader project to control the reactivity of molecules in general,' Nest explains. 'The question we ask ourselves is, "Can we use a laser pulse to control the reactivity of a system?" and one of the easiest things for us to try [to control] is aromaticity, because we are theoreticians... so we decided to start with something small.' More...
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2011/November/09111102.asp
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