  Photoassociation, assembling molecules from atoms using laser light, is
limited by the low density of atom pairs at sufficiently short interatomic
separations. Here, we show that non-resonant light with intensities of the
order of 10^10 W/cm^2 modifies the thermal cloud of atoms, enhancing the
Boltzmann weight of shape resonances and pushing scattering states below the
dissociation limit. This leads to an enhancement of photoassociation rates by
several orders of magnitude and opens the way to significantly larger numbers
of ground state molecules in a thermal ensemble than achieved so far.
