Daniel Rolles

Kansas State University - Department of Physics, J.R. Macdonald Laboratory

"Imaging Ultrafast Electronic and Nuclear Dynamics in Gas-Phase Molecules"

September 25, 2023

Abstract

Continuing technical advances in the creation of (sub-)femtosecond pulses with optical lasers, laser-based high harmonic generation sources, and relativistic electron guns, together with the tremendous successes of X-ray free-electron lasers [1], have now turned the long-standing vision of “recording a molecular movie” with femtosecond temporal and atomic scale structural resolution into reality. These technological developments have opened up an exciting new field at the borderline between atomic & molecular physics and physical chemistry, which promises to have a profound impact on our understanding of molecular physics and molecular dynamics. I will present recent examples of experiments utilizing a variety of different ultrafast techniques such as time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy [2] and Coulomb explosion imaging [3,4,5]. The results are compared to experiments performed with ultrafast electron and X-ray diffraction in order to highlight that a truly comprehensive understanding of ultrafast dynamics can only be obtained by combining multiple experimental techniques and ab initio theory.

References

[1] D. Rolles, Adv. Phys. X 8, 2132182 (2022)

[2] S. Pathak et al., Nat. Chem. 12, 795 (2020)

[3] R. Boll et al., Nat. Phys. 18, 423-428 (2022)

[4] S. Pathak et al., J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 11, 10205 (2020)

[5] S. Bhattacharyya et al., J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 13, 5845 (2022)