Imaging the square of the correlated two-electron wave function of a hydrogen molecule
Abstract
The toolbox for imaging molecules is well-equipped today. Some techniques visualize the geometrical structure, others the electron density or electron orbitals. Molecules are many-body systems for which the correlation between the constituents is decisive and the spatial and the momentum distribution of one electron depends on those of the other electrons and the nuclei. Such correlations have escaped direct observation by imaging techniques so far. Here, we implement an imaging scheme which visualizes correlations between electrons by coincident detection of the reaction fragments after high energy photofragmentation. With this technique, we examine the H2 two-electron wave function in which electron-electron correlation beyond the mean-field level is prominent. We visualize the dependence of the wave function on the internuclear distance. High energy photoelectrons are shown to be a powerful tool for molecular imaging. Our study paves the way for future time resolved correlation imaging at FELs and laser based X-ray sources.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1801.03746,
title = {Imaging the square of the correlated two-electron wave function of a hydrogen molecule},
author = {M. Waitz and R. Y. Bello and D. Metz and J. Lower and F. Trinter and C. Schober and M. Keiling and U. Lenz and M. Pitzer and K. Mertens and M. Martins and J. Viefhaus and S. Klumpp and T. Weber and L. Ph. H. Schmidt and J. B. Williams and M. S. Schöffler and V. V. Serov and A. S. Kheifets and L. Argenti and A. Palacios and F. Martin and T. Jahnke and R. Dörner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.03746},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
10 pages, 5 figures