Atomic and molecular interactions with photons articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The formation of C–H bonds via reaction of small inorganic molecules is of great interest for understanding the transition from inorganic to organic matter, but the detailed mechanisms remain elusive. Here, the authors demonstrate real-time visualization and coherent control of the ultrafast C–H bond formation dynamics in a light-induced bimolecular reaction from inorganic species.

    • Zhejun Jiang
    • , Hao Huang
    •  & Jian Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using gas cells for spectroscopic studies opens possibility for miniaturized platforms that can be integrated with other optical components. Here the authors demonstrate molecular rovibrational spectroscopy by confining molecules in a cell of subwavelength thickness.

    • Guadalupe Garcia Arellano
    • , Joao Carlos de Aquino Carvalho
    •  & Athanasios Laliotis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Probing molecules in excited vibrational states requires precise methods to extract the spectroscopic parameters. Here the authors demonstrate optical-optical double-resonance spectroscopy of excited-bands of methane using single pass high power continuous wave pump and cavity-enhanced frequency comb probe.

    • Vinicius Silva de Oliveira
    • , Isak Silander
    •  & Aleksandra Foltynowicz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    THz-driven electron emission is predicted to yield a single burst, due to the single-cycle waveform. Here, the authors demonstrate the confinement of single-cycle THz-waveform-driven electron emission to one of the two half cycles and the control of the active half cycle by changing the field polarity.

    • Shaoxian Li
    • , Ashutosh Sharma
    •  & József A. Fülöp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Realising a quantum-backaction-limited oscillator in the acoustic frequency range would have applications in sensing and metrology. Here, the authors reach this goal by demonstrating destructive interference between quantum back-action noise and shot noise down to sub-kHz range in a warm atomic vapor cell.

    • Jun Jia
    • , Valeriy Novikov
    •  & Eugene S. Polzik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multiparameter sensors in quantum optics are often complex due to use of external fields. Here the authors demonstrate a simple single-shot all-optical vector atomic magnetometer based on machine learning for the correspondence of the measured signals and the magnetic field.

    • Xin Meng
    • , Youwei Zhang
    •  & Yanhong Xiao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intense light pulses can create nonlinear ionization processes in atoms and molecules. Here the authors study the photoionization of xenon atoms using intense free-electron laser pulses that can create extremely high charge states and produce hollow atoms, featuring up to six simultaneous core-holes.

    • Aljoscha Rörig
    • , Sang-Kil Son
    •  & Rebecca Boll

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Capturing the detailed structural evolution of electronic excited states is a challenging but critical step to understand and control ultrafast molecular dynamics. Here, combining a Coulomb explosion imaging approach and molecular dynamics simulations, the authors retrieve the transient geometry of the ground and excited states of D2O mono- and dication with few femtosecond, few picometre accuracy.

    • Zhenzhen Wang
    • , Xiaoqing Hu
    •  & Dajun Ding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Uncovering the mechanism behind neutral H2 formation from ionised hydrocarbon molecules still poses severe challenges. Here, based on the orbital fingerprints in the photoelectron momentum distributions, the authors were able to resolve the contributions of the ground and excited ionic states to the H2 formation channel.

    • Yizhang Yang
    • , Hao Ren
    •  & Dajun Ding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ultracold atoms are generated in the lab using optical trapping and cooling. Here the authors implement a fiber-coupled photonic integrated circuit for a beam delivery to a three-dimensional magneto-optical trap where greater than 1 million rubidium atoms are cooled near 200 μK.

    • Andrei Isichenko
    • , Nitesh Chauhan
    •  & Daniel J. Blumenthal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spontaneous Raman scattering is classically understood as an incoherent process. Here, the authors demonstrate that macroscopic quantum coherence among billions of vibrating molecules in a liquid is generated when single photon detection and single spatio-temporal mode excitation are implemented.

    • Valeria Vento
    • , Santiago Tarrago Velez
    •  & Christophe Galland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experiments suggest that placing molecules in an infrared cavity alters their reactivity, an effect lacking a clear theoretical explanation. Here, the authors show that the key to understanding this process may lie in quantum light-matter interactions.

    • Lachlan P. Lindoy
    • , Arkajit Mandal
    •  & David R. Reichman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy probes the chemical environment in a molecule at a specific atomic site. Here the authors extend this concept with a site selective trigger to follow chemical bond changes as they occur on the femtosecond time scale.

    • Andre Al-Haddad
    • , Solène Oberli
    •  & Christoph Bostedt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Floquet engineering aims at inducing new properties in materials with light. Here the authors have used pulses of variable durations, to investigate its applicability in the femtosecond domain. Surprisingly, they found that it holds to the few-cycle limit.

    • Matteo Lucchini
    • , Fabio Medeghini
    •  & Mauro Nisoli

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-resolution molecular spectroscopy with cryogenic setups is hampered by the lack of a skilled interrogation tool. Here, the authors demonstrate absolute metrology of cold rovibrational spectra at 1 kHz accuracy level, by coupling a Lamb-dip saturated-absorption cavity ring-down spectrometer to a buffer-gas cooling source.

    • Roberto Aiello
    • , Valentina Di Sarno
    •  & Pasquale Maddaloni

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pauli exclusion principle has fundamental and practical consequences to the structure of matter and particle interaction. Here the authors demonstrate Pauli blocking in a coherently driven system using trapped 3He degenerate Fermi gases.

    • Raphael Jannin
    • , Yuri van der Werf
    •  & Kjeld S. E. Eikema

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-precision measurements are useful to find isotopic shifts and electron correlation. Here the authors measure electron affinity and hyperfine splitting of atomic oxygen with higher precision than previous studies.

    • Moa K. Kristiansson
    • , Kiattichart Chartkunchand
    •  & Dag Hanstorp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Energy transfer between the electromagnetic field and atoms or molecules is fundamentally interesting. Here the authors demonstrate stepwise energy transfer between broadband mid-infrared optical pulses and vibrating methylsulfonylmethane molecules in aqueous solution.

    • Martin T. Peschel
    • , Maximilian Högner
    •  & Ioachim Pupeza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Determining the time evolution of reactions at the quantum mechanical level improves our understanding of molecular dynamics. Here, authors separate the breakup of water, one bond at a time, from other processes leading to the same final products and experimentally identify, separate, and follow step by step two breakup paths of the transient OD+ fragment.

    • Travis Severt
    • , Zachary L. Streeter
    •  & Itzik Ben-Itzhak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cold-atom interferometers have been miniaturized towards fieldable quantum inertial sensing applications. Here the authors demonstrate a compact cold-atom interferometer using microfabricated gratings and discuss the possible use of photonic integrated circuits for laser systems.

    • Jongmin Lee
    • , Roger Ding
    •  & Peter D. D. Schwindt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors provide a theoretical description of non-Hermitian topological phenomena in an atomic mirror. They find out diverse and unexpected phenomena by constructing an ad-hoc theoretical model. In particular, exceptional points, dispersive bulk Fermi arcs, and non-Hermitian geometry-dependent skin effect.

    • Yi-Cheng Wang
    • , Jhih-Shih You
    •  & H. H. Jen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In large qubit registers, long coherence times and individual qubit control are difficult to achieve at the same time. Here, the authors assemble a 2D register of qubits in an array of fermionic alkaline-earth atoms, where tailored pulses can be applied to subsets of individual qubits in parallel.

    • Katrina Barnes
    • , Peter Battaglino
    •  & Michael Yarwood

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dicke superradiance is an important collective quantum phenomenon, but its analysis is hindered by the exponential growth of the state space with atom number. Here, the authors develop a theoretical framework that overcomes this, and predict a critical distance below which superradiant decay can be observed in large ordered arrays.

    • Stuart J. Masson
    •  & Ana Asenjo-Garcia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rydberg atoms are sensitive to microwave signals and hence can be used to detect them. Here the authors demonstrate a Rydberg receiver enhanced by deep learning, Rydberg atoms acting as antennae, to receive, extract, and decode the multi-frequency microwave signal effectively.

    • Zong-Kai Liu
    • , Li-Hua Zhang
    •  & Bao-Sen Shi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The long-standing question whether ammonia dimer is hydrogen bonded is solved by first-principles quantum mechanical calculations. The authors show that the dimer is extremely fluxional, but the probability of hydrogen-bonded configurations prevails.

    • Jing Aling
    • , Krzysztof Szalewicz
    •  & Ad van der Avoird

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors introduce the concept of real-synthetic symmetries and use it as a tool to derive selection rules in seemingly symmetry-broken strong-field interactions. These symmetries and their corresponding selection rules can be applied in various systems form harmonic generation to topological photonics

    • Matan Even Tzur
    • , Ofer Neufeld
    •  & Oren Cohen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The photodissociation of transition metal carbonyls is involved in catalysis and synthetic processes. Here the authors, using semi-classical excited state molecular dynamics, observe details of the early stage dynamics in the photodissociation of Fe(CO)5, including synchronous bursts of CO at periodic intervals of 90 femtoseconds.

    • Ambar Banerjee
    • , Michael R. Coates
    •  & Michael Odelius

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Synthetic dimensions, states of a system engineered to act as if they were a reconfigurable extra spatial dimension, have been demonstrated with different systems previously. Here the authors create a synthetic dimension using Rydberg atoms and configure it to support topological edge states.

    • S. K. Kanungo
    • , J. D. Whalen
    •  & T. C. Killian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The internal Stark effect, a shift of the spectral lines of a chromophore induced by electrostatic fields in its close environment, plays an important role in nature. Here the authors observe a Stark shift in the fluorescence spectrum of a phthalocyanine molecule upon charge modifications within the molecule itself, achieved by sequential removal of the central protons with a STM tip.

    • Kirill Vasilev
    • , Benjamin Doppagne
    •  & Guillaume Schull

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Imaging the charge flow in photoexcited molecules would provide key information on photophysical and photochemical processes. Here the authors demonstrate tracking in real time after photoexcitation the change in charge density at a specific site of 2-thiouracil using time-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

    • D. Mayer
    • , F. Lever
    •  & M. Gühr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measuring photoionization time delays is an interesting and challenging topic. Here the authors demonstrate a method to measure the photoionization time delays using inner-shell ionization of CO molecule.

    • Jonas Rist
    • , Kim Klyssek
    •  & Till Jahnke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons play an important role in interstellar chemistry, where interaction with high energy photons can induce ionization and fragmentation reactions. Here the authors, with XUV-IR pump-probe experiments, investigate the ultrafast photoinduced dynamics of fluorene, phenanthrene and pyrene, providing insight into their preferred reaction channels.

    • J. W. L. Lee
    • , D. S. Tikhonov
    •  & M. Schnell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Jahn-Teller effect is the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the molecular structure caused by the coupling of electrons and nuclei. Here the authors use ultrafast Coulomb explosion imaging to map the evolution of the fundamental symmetry lowering process in photoionized methane within around 20fs.

    • Min Li
    • , Ming Zhang
    •  & Peixiang Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Laser-assisted electron scattering (LAES) is a commonly observed strong field process in gas phase systems. Here the authors use helium droplets with core atoms and molecules to observe increased electron energy due to multiple LAES events within the droplets.

    • Leonhard Treiber
    • , Bernhard Thaler
    •  & Markus Koch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nuclear spin polarization and relaxation can be studied using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Here the authors demonstrate a combination of fast-field cycling and optical magnetometry techniques, to realize a NMR sensor that operates in the region of very low frequency and high relaxation rate.

    • Sven Bodenstedt
    • , Morgan W. Mitchell
    •  & Michael C. D. Tayler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Room-temperature single photon sources with memory capabilities are promising for quantum information processing, but are currently limited in their memory time or photon purity. Here, the authors report single photon emission with good antibunching from an atomic vapour cell source with 0.68 ms memory time.

    • Karsten B. Dideriksen
    • , Rebecca Schmieg
    •  & Eugene S. Polzik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optical pulses can be useful to create and control molecules in higher quantum states. Here the authors use optical pumping to create rotationally excited states of SiO+ molecular ion into super rotor ensemble.

    • Ivan O. Antonov
    • , Patrick R. Stollenwerk
    •  & Brian C. Odom

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