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Register a new userExceptionally strong correlation-driven charge migration and attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy
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Maximilian Hollstein
Publication date
2016
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We investigate theoretically charge migration following prompt double ionization of a polyatomic molecule (C$_2$H$_4$BrI) and find that for double ionization, correlation-driven charge migration appears to be particularly prominent, i.e., we observe exceptionally rich dynamics solely driven by the electron-electron interaction even in the situation when the electrons are emitted from outer-valence orbitals. These strongly correlated electron dynamics are witnessed in the theoretically determined time-resolved transient absorption cross section. Strikingly, features in the cross section can be traced back to electron hole populations and time-dependent partial charges and hence, can be interpreted with surprising ease. Remarkably, by taking advantage of element specific core-to-valence transitions, the hole population dynamics can be followed both in time and space. With this, not only do we report the high relevance of correlation-driven charge migration following double ionization but our findings also highlight the outstanding role of attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (ATAS) as one of the most promising techniques for monitoring ultrafast electron dynamics in complex molecular systems.
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The recent demonstration of isolated attosecond pulses from an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) opens the possibility for probing ultrafast electron dynamics at X-ray wavelengths. An established experimental method for probing ultrafast dynamics is X-ray transient absorption spectroscopy, where the X-ray absorption spectrum is measured by scanning the central photon energy and recording the resultant photoproducts. The spectral bandwidth inherent to attosecond pulses is wide compared to the resonant features typically probed, which generally precludes the application of this technique in the attosecond regime. In this paper we propose and demonstrate a new technique to conduct transient absorption spectroscopy with broad bandwidth attosecond pulses with the aid of ghost imaging, recovering sub-bandwidth resolution in photoproduct-based absorption measurements.
Sudden ionisation of a relatively large molecule can initiate a correlation-driven process dubbed charge migration, where the electron density distribution is expected to rapidly change. Capturing this few-femtosecond/attosecond charge redistribution represents the real-time observation of the electron correlation in the molecule. So far, there has been no experimental evidence of this process. Here we report on a time-resolved study of the correlation-driven charge migration process occurring in the bio-relevant molecule adenine after ionisation by a 15-35 eV attosecond pulse . We find that, the production of intact doubly charged adenine - via a shortly-delayed laser-induced second ionisation event - represents the signature of a charge inflation mechanism resulting from the many-body excitation. This conclusion is supported by first-principles time-dependent simulations. Our findings opens new important perspectives for the control of the molecular reactivity at the electronic timescale.
Transient absorption is a very powerful observable in attosecond experiments on atoms, molecules and solids and is frequently used in experiments employing phase-locked few-cycle infrared and XUV laser pulses derived from high harmonic generation. We show numerically and analytically that in non-centrosymmetric systems, such as many polyatomic molecules, which-way interference enabled by the lack of parity conservation leads to new spectral absorption features, which directly reveal the laser electric field. The extension of Attosecond Transient Absorption Spectroscopy (ATAS) to such targets hence becomes sensitive to global and local inversion symmetry. We anticipate that ATAS will find new applications in non-centrosymmetric systems, in which the carrier-to-envelope phase of the infrared pulse becomes a relevant parameter and in which the orientation of the sample and the electronic symmetry of the molecule can be addressed.
Time-resolved spectroscopy provides the main tool for analyzing the dynamics of excitonic energy transfer in light-harvesting complexes. To infer time-scales and effective coupling parameters from experimental data requires to develop numerical exact theoretical models. The finite duration of the laser-molecule interactions and the reorganization process during the exciton migration affect the location and strength of spectroscopic signals. We show that the non-perturbative hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) method captures these processes in a model exciton system, including the charge transfer state.
The possibility of suddenly ionized molecules undergoing extremely fast electron hole dynamics prior to significant structural change was first recognized more than 20 years ago and termed charge migration. The accurate probing of ultrafast electron hole dynamics requires measurements that have both sufficient temporal resolution and can detect the localization of a specific hole within the molecule. We report an investigation of the dynamics of inner valence hole states in isopropanol where we use an x-ray pump/x-ray probe experiment, with site and state-specific probing of a transient hole state localized near the oxygen atom in the molecule, together with an ab initio theoretical treatment. We record the signature of transient hole dynamics and make the first observation of dynamics driven by frustrated Auger-Meitner transitions. We verify that the hole lifetime is consistent with our theoretical prediction. This state-specific measurement paves the way to widespread application for observations of transient hole dynamics localized in space and time in molecules and thus to charge transfer phenomena that are fundamental in chemical and material physics.
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