Observations of Ultrafast Superfluorescent Beatings in a Cesium Atomic Vapor Excited by Femtosecond Laser Pulses

Spontaneous emission from individual atoms in vapor lasts nanoseconds, if not microseconds, and beatings in this emission involve only directly excited energy sublevels. In contrast, the superfluorescent emissions burst on a much-reduced timescale and their beatings involve both directly and indirectly excited energy sublevels. In this work, picosecond and femtosecond superfluorescent beatings are observed from a dense cesium atomic vapor. Cesium atoms are excited by 60-femtosecond long, 800 nm laser pulses via two-photon processes into their coherent superpositions of the ground 6S and excited 8S states. As a part of the transient four wave mixing process, the yoked superfluorescent blue light at lower transitions of 6S - 7P are recorded and studied. Delayed buildup time of this blue light is measured as a function of the input laser beam power using a high-resolution 2 ps streak camera. The power dependent buildup delay time is consistently doubled as the vapor temperature is lowered to cut the number of atoms by half. At low power and density, a beating with a period of 100 picoseconds representing the ground state splitting is observed. The autocorrelation measurements of the generated blue light exhibit a beating with a quasi-period of 230 fs corresponding to the splitting of the 7P level primarily at lower input laser power. Understanding and, eventually, controlling the intriguing nature of superfluorescent beatings may permit a rapid quantum operation free from the rather slow spontaneous emission processes from atoms and molecules.

Half-Metallicity in Smallest Cage-like Cluster of CdTe with Doping of Transition Metal Atoms

We report first principles theory based electronic structure studies of a semiconducting stoichiometric cage-like Cd9Te9 cluster. Substantial changes are observed in the electronic structure of the cluster on passivation with fictitious hydrogen atoms, in particular, widening of the energy gap between highest occupied molecular orbital and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital and enhancement in stability of cluster is seen. The cluster, when substitutionally mono-doped for a Cd by a set of 3d and 4d transition metal atoms (Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ru, Rh and Pd), is found to acquire polarization as seen from spin resolved density of states near Fermi level. Further, such mono-doping in passivated cluster shows half-metallic behavior. Mapping of partial density of states of each system on that of undoped cluster reveals additional levels caused by doping each TM atom separately. In the 3d elemental doping, Ti and Mn doping result into electron type doping whereas all other cases result into hole doped systems. For all the 4d elements studied, it is akin to the doping with holes for Cd substitution in the outer ring, whereas for Ru and Rh, there is electron type doping in case of substitution for Cd in central ring upon passivation. A comparison of partial density of states plots for bare and passivated clusters, on doping with transition metal atoms, suggests suitability of the cage-like cluster for spintronics applications.

Time-Resolved Vibrational Spectroscopy to Measure Lifetime of the E$^3Pi_g(v=3)$ state of Molecular Iodine

The lifetime of the $E^3Pi_g(v=3)$ state of molecular iodine was measured in the gas phase at room temperature. The $E^3Pi_g$ state was selectively populated by two sequential nanosecond pulse laser excitation. Resolved molecular fluorescence for the $B^3Pi_u^+leftarrow E^3Pi_g$ was analyzed and the lifetime of the $E(v=3)$ state, measured using a time-correlated single photon counting technique, is to be $tau=21 (2)$ ns.

3-Aminopropanol: polymolecular structures that determine unique solvation motifs

Intermolecular bonding of 3-aminopropanol (3-AP) molecules is discussed in comparison to 2-aminopropanol (2-AP) and 2-aminoethamol (2-AE). The consideration is based on the results of nonempirical quantum chemical simulations of the molecular clusters carried out at the MP2/6-31+G(d,p) level. Particular attention is paid to the formation of variously ordered 3-AP aggregates, which can be doubled or bracelet rings, extended chains, ribbons, or double helices, impossible in the case of any close amino alcohol analogue, but favorable for the solvation of diverse either hydrophilic or hydrophobic species.

Indication of strong interatomic Coulombic decay in slow He$^{2+}$-Ne$_2$ collisions

Electron removal in collisions of alpha particles with neon dimers is studied using an independent-atom-independent-electron model based on the semiclassical approximation of heavy-particle collision physics. The dimer is assumed to be frozen at its equilibrium bond length and collision events for the two ion-atom subsystems are combined in an impact parameter by impact parameter fashion for three mutually perpendicular orientations. Both frozen atomic target and dynamic response model calculations are carried out using the coupled-channel two-center basis generator method. We pay particular attention to inner-valence Ne($2s$) electron removal, which is associated with interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD), resulting in low-energy electron emission and dimer fragmentation. Our calculations confirm a previous experimental result at 150 keV/amu impact energy regarding the relative strength of ICD compared to direct electron emission. They further indicate that ICD is the dominant Ne$^+$ + Ne$^+$ fragmentation process below 10 keV/amu, suggesting that a strong low-energy electron yield will be observed in the ion-dimer system in a regime in which the creation of continuum electrons is a rare event in the ion-atom problem.

Elastic scattering of slow electrons by carbon nanotubes

In this paper we calculate the elastic scattering cross sections of slow electron by carbon nanotubes. The corresponding electron-nanotube interaction is substituted by a zero-thickness cylindrical potential that neglects the atomic structure of real nanotubes, thus limiting the range of applicability of our approach to sufficiently low incoming electron energies. The strength of the potential is chosen the same that was used in describing scattering of electrons by fullerene C60. We present results for total and partial electron scattering cross sections as well as respective angular distributions, all with account of five lowest angular momenta contributions. In the calculations we assumed that the incoming electron moves perpendicular to the nanotube axis, since along the axis the incoming electron moves freely.

Flexibility and regularity of the hydration structure of a sodium ion. Nonempirical insight

The stationary nonempirical simulations of Na+(H2O)n clusters with n in a range of 28 to 51 carried out at the density functional level with a hybrid B3LYP functional and the Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics modeling of the size selected clusters reveal the interrelated structural and energetic peculiarities of sodium hydration structures. Surface, bulk, and transient configurations of the clusters are distinguished with the different location of the sodium nucleus (close to either the spatial center of the structure or one of its side faces) and its consistently changing coordination number (which typically equals five or six). The <rNaO> mean Na-O distances for the first-shell water molecules are found to depend both on the spatial character of the structure and the local coordination of sodium. The <rNaO> values are compared to different experimental estimates, and the virtual discrepancy of the latter is explained based on the results of the cluster simulations. Different coordination neighborhoods of sodium are predicted depending on its local fraction in the actual specimens.

A New Non-energetic Route to Complex Organic Molecules in Astrophysical Environments: The C + H$_2$O $rightarrow$ H$_2$CO Solid-state Reaction

The solid-state reaction C + H$_2$O $rightarrow$ H$_2$CO was studied experimentally following the codeposition of C atoms and H$_2$O molecules at low temperatures. In spite of the reaction barrier and absence of energetic triggering, the reaction proceeds fast on the experimental timescale pointing to its quantum tunneling mechanism. This route to formaldehyde shows a new non-energetic pathway to complex organic and prebiotic molecules in astrophysical environments. Energetic processing of the produced ice by UV irradiation leads mainly to the destruction of H$_2$CO and the formation of CO$_2$ challenging the role of energetic processing in the synthesis of complex organic molecules under astrophysically relevant conditions.

B-Spline basis Hartree-Fock method for arbitrary central potentials: atoms, clusters and electron gas

An implementation of the Hartree-Fock (HF) method capable of robust convergence for well-behaved arbitrary central potentials is presented. The Hartree-Fock equations are converted to a generalized eigenvalue problem by employing a B-spline basis in a finite-size box. Convergence of the self-consistency iterations for the occupied electron orbitals is achieved by increasing the magnitude of the electron-electron Coulomb interaction gradually to its true value. For the Coulomb central potential, convergence patterns and energies are presented for a selection of atoms and negative ions, and are benchmarked against existing calculations. The present approach is also tested by calculating the ground states for an electron gas confined by a harmonic potential and also by that of uniformly charged sphere (the jellium model of alkali-metal clusters). For the harmonically confined electron-gas problem, comparisons are made with the Thomas-Fermi method and its accurate asymptotic analytical solution, with close agreement found for the electron energy and density for large electron numbers. We test the accuracy and effective completeness of the excited state manifolds by calculating the static dipole polarizabilities at the HF level and using the Random-Phase Approximation. Using the latter is crucial for the electron-gas and cluster models, where the effect of electron screening is very important. Comparisons are made for with experimental data for sodium clusters of up to $sim $100 atoms.

Charge-state distribution of aerosolized nanoparticles

In single particle imaging experiments, beams of individual nanoparticles are exposed to intense pulses of x-rays from free-electron lasers to record diffraction patterns of single, isolated molecules. The reconstruction for structure determination relies on signal from many identical particles. Therefore, well-defined-sample delivery conditions are desired in order to achieve sample uniformity, including avoidance of charge polydispersity. We have observed charging of 220 nm polystyrene particles in an aerosol beam created by a gas-dynamic virtual nozzle focusing technique, without intentional charging of the nanoparticles. Here, we present a deflection method for detecting and characterizing the charge states of a beam of aerosolized nanoparticles. Our analysis of the observed charge-state distribution using optical light-sheet localization microscopy and quantitative particle trajectory simulations is consistent with previous descriptions of skewed charging probabilities of triboelectrically charged nanoparticles.