3.1 Dynamics of Condensed Phase Molecular Systems

The people involved:
Carlo Kleine, Maria Ekimova, Gildas Goldsztejn, Sebastian Raabe, Christian Strüber, Jan Ludwig, Suresh Yarlagadda, Marc-Oliver Winghart, Sebastian Eckert, Oliver Reichel, Stefan Eisebitt, Marc J. J. Vrakking, Thomas Elsaesser, Erik T. J. Nibbering, Arnaud Rouzée

National and International collaboration: Heike Löchel,^‡ Jürgen Probst,^‡ Christoph Braig,^‡ Christian Seifert,^‡ Alexei Erko,^‡ Andrey Sokolov,^o  Edward R Grant^†
‡: Nano Optics Berlin GmbH, Krumme Strasse 64, 10627 Berlin, Germany.
^o: Institute of Applied Photonics (IAP) e.V., Rudower Chaussee 29/31, 12489 Berlin, Germany.
^†: Department of Chemistry and Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of British Columbia, 2036 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z1.

Construction of the experimental set-up, and first experiments on molecular nitrogen.

Highlight I: One slide summary.

2. Table-top approach to liquid phase X-ray absorption spectroscopy using HHG with long wavelength driver pulses and flatjet technology.

3. Extreme high-order harmonics spectra covering the water window C and N K-edge spectral regions.  

4. X-ray absorption spectra measured for particular solutes in the water window, depicted as solid black lines. Dashed lines indicate the solvent water only response. Blue and orange thin lines are spectra measured at the BESSYII storage ring facility. These reference measurements have been convoluted with the spectral resolution of the HHG set-up spectrometer, for a direct comparison between  the XAS HHG and BESSYII carbon and nitrogen K-edge results in the spectra shown in the right column.  

5. X-Ray Spectrometer with Cylindrical Mirror + RZP

6. Steady-state XAS / XES spectra of N₂ and N₂⁺. Relevant molecular orbitals.

7. Femtosecond nitrogen K-edge spectra upon strong field ionization of molecular nitrogen.

8. Transient population dynamics of the X, A, and B states of molecular nitrogen cation.

9. Models to explain the observations the observed population dynamics: population inversion between B and X states, depopulation of the X state to intermediate A state, and coherent coupling between the X, A and B states.

10. Fragmentation and dissocation dynamics of molecular nitrogen cation on picosecond time scales.