Femtosecond electronic and hydrogen structural dynamics in ammonia imaged with ultrafast electron diffraction
Abstract
Directly imaging structural dynamics involving hydrogen atoms by ultrafast diffraction methods is complicated by their low scattering cross-sections. Here we demonstrate that megaelectronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction is sufficiently sensitive to follow hydrogen dynamics in isolated molecules. In a study of the photodissociation of gas phase ammonia, we simultaneously observe signatures of the nuclear and corresponding electronic structure changes resulting from the dissociation dynamics in the time-dependent diffraction. Both assignments are confirmed by ab initio simulations of the photochemical dynamics and the resulting diffraction observable. While the temporal resolution of the experiment is insufficient to resolve the dissociation in time, our results represent an important step towards the observation of proton dynamics in real space and time.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.03586,
title = {Femtosecond electronic and hydrogen structural dynamics in ammonia imaged with ultrafast electron diffraction},
author = {Elio G. Champenois and Nanna H. List and Matthew Ware and Mathew Britton and Philip H. Bucksbaum and Xinxin Cheng and Martin Centurion and James P. Cryan and Ruaridh Forbes and Ian Gabalski and Kareem Hegazy and Matthias C. Hoffmann and Andrew J. Howard and Fuhao Ji and Ming-Fu Lin and J. Pedro Nunes and Xiaozhe Shen and Jie Yang and Xijie Wang and Todd J. Martinez and Thomas J. A. Wolf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.03586},
year = {2023}
}