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Attosecond core-level absorption spectroscopy reveals the electronic and nuclear dynamics of molecular ring opening

Nature Photonics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

We show that attosecond core-level spectroscopy is a powerful tool for investigating molecular dynamics due to its combined attosecond temporal resolution and the broad coherent spectrum that allows deciphering the signatures of nuclear and electronic motion through their different energetic signatures. The method reveals that the correlated real-time electronic and nuclear wavepacket dynamics and non-adiabatic transitions across conical intersections identify electronic and nuclear coherences and directly register symmetry changes in the X-ray absorption spectrum. We demonstrate the method’s efficacy to unveil the entire time history of the ring-opening dynamics of furan. The investigation establishes attosecond core-level spectroscopy as a potent method to investigate the real-time dynamics of photochemical reaction pathways in molecular systems.

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Fig. 1: Energetic evolution of furan.
Fig. 2: Carbon K-edge XANES of furan.
Fig. 3: Electronic and vibrational coherences.
Fig. 4: Simulated electronic and nuclear dynamics.

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Data availability

All data that support the plots and findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Code availability

Information about the codes and scripts is available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10575861 (ref. 59) and via GitHub at https://github.com/ziechys/SharcAnalysis.

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Acknowledgements

J.B. acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council for ERC Advanced Grant ‘TRANSFORMER’ (788218), ERC Proof of Concept Grant ‘miniX’ (840010), FET-OPEN ‘PETACom’ (829153), FET-OPEN ‘OPTOlogic’ (899794), FET-OPEN ‘TwistedNano’ (101046424), Laserlab-Europe (871124), Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN ‘smart-X’ (860553) and MINECO for Plan Nacional PID2020–112664-GB-I00; AGAUR for SGR-2021-01449, MINECO for ‘Severo Ochoa’ (CEX2019-000910-S), Fundació Cellex Barcelona, the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Prize. S.S. acknowledges Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 713729 (COFUND). M.R. and A.S. acknowledge Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 754510 (PROBIST). K.M.Z. and S.G. are part of the Max Planck School of Photonics supported by BMBF, Max Planck Society and Fraunhofer Society. S.G. highly acknowledges support from the European Research Council via the Consolidator Grant QUEM-CHEM (772676) and the CRC 1375 NOA—‘Nonlinear Optics down to Atomic scales’. K.M.Z. acknowledges fruitful discussions with M. Richter. We thank J. Menino and C. Dengra for their technical support.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: S. Severino, K. M. Ziems.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICFO—Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Spain

    S. Severino, M. Reduzzi, A. Summers, H.-W. Sun, Y.-H. Chien & J. Biegert

  2. Institute of Physical Chemistry and Max Planck School of Photonics, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany

    K. M. Ziems & S. Gräfe

  3. Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, Jena, Germany

    S. Gräfe

  4. Institute of Applied Physics and Abbe Center of Photonics, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany

    S. Gräfe

  5. ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

    J. Biegert

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Contributions

J.B. supervised the project. S.S. and M.R. performed the experiments with support from J.B., A.S., H.-W.S. and Y.-H.C. S.S. analysed the experimental data with support from M.R., J.B. and K.M.Z. K.M.Z. performed the quantum chemical and semi-classical dynamics calculations with support from S.G. K.M.Z. and S.G. analysed the theoretical data. J.B. wrote the paper with input from S.S., K.M.Z. and S.G.

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Correspondence to J. Biegert.

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Nature Photonics thanks Mohammed Hassan, Zhi-Heng Loh and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Notes 1–12, Supplementary Figs. 1–22, Tables 1–5 and refs. 1–39.

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Severino, S., Ziems, K.M., Reduzzi, M. et al. Attosecond core-level absorption spectroscopy reveals the electronic and nuclear dynamics of molecular ring opening. Nat. Photon. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01436-9

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