English

Diffractive molecular orbital tomography

Optics 2017-03-29 v1 Atomic and Molecular Clusters Atomic Physics

Abstract

High harmonic generation in the interaction of femtosecond lasers with atoms and molecules opens the path to molecular orbital tomography and to probe the electronic dynamics with attosecond-{\AA}ngstr\"{o}m resolutions. Molecular orbital tomography requires both the amplitude and phase of the high harmonics. Yet the measurement of phases requires sophisticated techniques and represents formidable challenges at present. Here we report a novel scheme, called diffractive molecular orbital tomography, to retrieve the molecular orbital solely from the amplitude of high harmonics without measuring any phase information. We have applied this method to image the molecular orbitals of N2_2, CO2_2 and C2_2H2_2. The retrieved orbital is further improved by taking account the correction of Coulomb potential. The diffractive molecular orbital tomography scheme, removing the roadblock of phase measurement, significantly simplifies the molecular orbital tomography procedure and paves an efficient and robust way to the imaging of more complex molecules.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.00750,
  title  = {Diffractive molecular orbital tomography},
  author = {Chunyang Zhai and Xiaosong Zhu and Pengfei Lan and Feng Wang and Lixin He and Wenjing Shi and Yang Li and Min Li and Qingbin Zhang and Peixiang Lu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.00750},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

10 pages, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:33:32.964Z