English

Imaging the Breakdown of Molecular-Frame Dynamics through Rotational Uncoupling

Atomic and Molecular Clusters 2017-07-05 v2

Abstract

We demonstrate the breakdown of molecular-frame dynamics induced by the uncoupling of molecular rotation from electronic motion in molecular Rydberg states. We observe this non-Born-Oppenheimer regime in the time domain through photoelectron imaging of a coherent molecular Rydberg wave packet in N2\textrm{N}_2. The photoelectron angular distribution shows a radically different time evolution than that of a typical molecular-frame-fixed electron orbital, revealing the uncoupled motion of the electron as it precesses around the averagedaveraged anisotropic potential of the rotating ion-core.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1606.02663,
  title  = {Imaging the Breakdown of Molecular-Frame Dynamics through Rotational Uncoupling},
  author = {Lucas J. Zipp and Adi Natan and Philip H. Bucksbaum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.02663},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

6 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:20:48.881Z