With the advent of attosecond light pulses at the dawn of the twenty first century, access to the time scale of electronic motion, i.e., the ultimate time scale responsible for chemical transformations, was finally at our reach. Since the first attosecond pump-probe experiments performed in molecules [1,2], the field has grown exponentially, leading to a discipline that we call attochemistry...
Alkyl iodides serve as key model systems for studying ultrafast nonadiabatic dynamics. UV radiation excites the A-band, with an absorption spectrum centered near 260 nm [1], leading to a rapid C–I bond cleavage. This neutral fragmentation is intrinsically governed by a conical intersection (CI) [2]. However, the limited temporal resolution of previous experiments has hindered direct...
The ultrafast relaxation mechanism of furan (C4H4O) is known to be prototypical of the Ring-Opening (RO) and Ring-Puckering (RP) dynamics of cyclic molecules [1-4]. Despite encouraging results obtained so far [2-4], experimentally identifying the main relaxation pathways with their electronic and vibrational coherences has been out of reach due to the ultrafast timescales and the involvement...
Two key concepts characterize the ultrafast many-electron dynamics triggered in atoms and molecules upon interaction with ultrashort X-ray laser pulses produced by an X-ray free electron laser (FEL) source: quantum coherence [1] and quantum entanglement: the former underpins the few-femtosecond charge dynamics in molecules and the ensuing photochemical transformation; the latter limits the...
