News

Ursula Keller wins “Swiss Nobel” Marcel Benoist Prize- for pioneering work in ultrafast lasers
MUST2022 Conference- a great success!
New scientific highlights- by MUST PIs Wörner, Chergui, and Richardson
FELs of Europe prize for Jeremy Rouxel- “Development or innovative use of advanced instrumentation in the field of FELs”
Ruth Signorell wins Doron prizefor pioneering contributions to the field of fundamental aerosol science
New FAST-Fellow Uwe Thumm at ETH- lectures on Topics in Femto- and Attosecond Science
International Day of Women and Girls in Science- SSPh asked female scientists about their experiences
New scientific highlight- by MUST PIs Milne, Standfuss and Schertler
EU XFEL Young Scientist Award for Camila Bacellar,beamline scientist and group leader of the Alvra endstation at SwissFEL
Prizes for Giulia Mancini and Rebeca Gomez CastilloICO/IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics & Ernst Haber 2021
Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to RESOLV Member Benjamin List- for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis
NCCR MUST at Scientifica 2021- Lightning, organic solar cells, and virtual molecules

Ionization Charge Dynamics Tracked

October 22, 2015
 

Measurement and laser control of attosecond charge migration in ionized iodoacetylene.

 
The ultrafast motion of electrons and holes following light-matter interaction is fundamental to a broad range of chemical and biophysical processes. An international team of researchers from Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Russia and Denmark, led by the group of Prof. Hans Jakob Wörner have advanced high-harmonic spectroscopy to resolve - spatially and temporally - the migration of an electron hole immediately following ionization of iodoacetylene. 
A multidimensional approach, based on the measurement of both even and odd harmonic orders, enabled the team to reconstruct both quantum amplitudes and phases of the electronic states with a resolution of ~100 attoseconds. They separately reconstructed quasi-field-free and laser-controlled charge migration as a function of the spatial orientation of the molecule and determine the shape of the hole created by ionization.
The new method allows for the first time the observation of the movement of electrons after ionization - the removal of one electron of many - in a small molecule. The researcher found an extremely fast transport of the charge from one end of the molecule to the other in 930 attoseconds, and demonstrates that such transport processes can be actively guided by laserlight.
The new technique opens the prospect of laser control over electronic primary processes.
 

 
Fig. 1. Electron-hole density in iodoacetylene is shown migrating after laser-induced ionization with the molecule oriented perpendicular to the laser polarization field.


Reference

Kraus, P.M., Mignolet, B., Baykusheva, D., Rupenyan, A., Horný, L., Penka, E.F., Grassi, G., Tolstikhin, O.I., Schneider, J., Jensen, F., Madsen, L.B., Bandrauk, A.D., Remacle, F., and Wörner, H.J. (2015) Measurement and laser control of attosecond charge migration in ionized iodoacetylene. Science 350, 790-795 (10.1126/science.aab2160) Kraus-2015 (1.64 MB)


See also: articles in Chemical & Engineering News, ScienceDaily,
Press release by the ETH: Pressemitteilung-Woerner (182 KB)
 
back <<
NCCR MUST Office : ETHZ IQE/ULP-HPT H3 | Auguste-Piccard-Hof 1 | 8093 Zurich | E-Mail
The National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCR) are a research instrument of the Swiss National Science Foundation