Related papers: X-ray Coulomb explosion imaging reveals role of mo…
X-ray as well as electron diffraction are powerful tools for structure determination of molecules. Studies on randomly oriented molecules in the gas-phase address cases in which molecular crystals cannot be generated or the interaction-free…
The requirement of high space-time resolution and brightness is a great challenge for imaging atomic motion and making molecular movies. Important breakthroughs in ultrabright tabletop laser, x-ray and electron sources have enabled the…
When a chemical bond is broken, the molecular structure undergoes a transformation. An ideal experiment should probe the change in the electronic and nuclear structure simultaneously. Here, we present a method for the simultaneous…
A deep understanding of molecular photo-transformations is challenging because of the complex interaction between the configurations of electrons and nuclei. An initial optical excitation dissipates energy into electronic and structural…
Intense light with frequencies above typical atomic or molecular ionization potentials as provided by free-electron lasers couples many photons into extended targets such as clusters and biomolecules. This implies, in contrast to…
Determining the structure and following the structural evolution of molecules undergoing chemical reactions is one of the key goals of ultrafast molecular physics and chemistry. Recently, Coulomb explosion imaging has emerged as a promising…
Coulomb explosion imaging (CEI) with x-ray free electron lasers has recently been shown to be a powerful method for obtaining detailed structural information of gas-phase planar ring molecules [R. Boll et al. Nat. Phys. 18, 423-428 (2022)].…
Light-induced molecular dynamics often involve the excitation of several electronic, vibrational, and rotational states. Since the ensuing electronic and nuclear motion determines the pathways and outcomes of photoinduced reactions, our…
We present efficient and reliable molecular dynamics simulations of the photodissociation of dichloromethane followed by Coulomb explosion. These simulations are performed by calculating trajectories on accurate potential energy surfaces of…
We theoretically study how time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy can be applied for imaging coherent electron dynamics in molecules. We consider a process in which a pump pulse triggers coherent electronic dynamics in a…
Quantum coherence between electronic states of a photoionized molecule and the resulting process of ultrafast electron-hole migration have been put forward as a possible quantum mechanism of charge-directed reactivity governing the…
We explore time-resolved Coulomb explosion induced by intense, extreme ultraviolet (XUV) femtosecond pulses from the FLASH free-electron laser as a method to image photo-induced molecular dynamics in two molecules, iodomethane and…
The ingenious idea of single molecule imaging by hard x-ray Free Electron Laser (X-FEL) pulses was recently proposed by Neutze et al. [Nature,406,752(2000)]. However, in their numerical modelling of the Coulomb explosion several…
We investigate theoretically a nuclear excitation mechanism involving absorption of non-resonant photons leveraged by the coupling to the atomic shell. The nuclear non-resonant photoexcitation is assisted by electron recombination which…
The dynamics following laser-induced molecular photodissociation of gas-phase CH$_{2}$BrI at 271.6 nm were investigated by time-resolved Coulomb explosion imaging using intense near-IR femtosecond laser pulses. The observed delay-dependent…
The development of attosecond technology has enabled the real-time observation of coherent electron motion in atoms, molecules and condensed phases. Experimentally, it is now possible to generate laser pulses of durations of only a few tens…
We study the dynamics of initial nucleation processes of photoinduced structural change of molecular crystals. In order to describe the nonadiabatic transition in each molecule, we employ a model of localized electrons coupled with a fully…
The introduction of femto-chemistry has made it a primary goal to follow the nuclear and electronic evolution of a molecule in time and space as it undergoes a chemical reaction. Using Coulomb Explosion Imaging we have shot the first…
We develop a projection imaging technique to study ultracold plasma dynamics. We image the charged particle spatial distributions by extraction with a high-voltage pulse onto a position-sensitive detector. Measuring the 2D width of the ion…
A molecule can be optically accelerated to rotate unidirectionally at a frequency of a few terahertzes which is many orders higher than the classical mechanical rotor. Such a photon-induced ultrafast molecular unidirectional rotation has…