Ultrafast strong-field dissociation of vinyl bromide: An attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy and non-adiabatic molecular dynamics study
Abstract
Attosecond extreme ultraviolet (XUV) and soft x-ray sources provide powerful new tools for studying ultrafast molecular dynamics with atomic, state, and charge specificity. In this report, we employ attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy (ATAS) to follow strong-field-initiated dynamics in vinyl bromide. Probing the Br M edge allows one to assess the competing processes in neutral and ionized molecular species. Using ab initio non-adiabatic molecular dynamics, we simulate the neutral and cationic dynamics resulting from the interaction of the molecule with the strong field. Based on the dynamics results, the corresponding time-dependent XUV transient absorption spectra are calculated by applying high-level multi-reference methods. The state-resolved analysis obtained through the simulated dynamics and related spectral contributions enables a detailed and quantitative comparison with the experimental data. The main outcome of the interaction with the strong field is unambiguously the population of the first three cationic states, D1, D2, and D3. The first two show exclusively vibrational dynamics while the D3 state is characterized by an ultrafast dissociation of the molecule via C–Br bond rupture within 100 fs in 50% of the analyzed trajectories. The combination of the three simulated ionic transient absorption spectra is in excellent agreement with the experimental results. This work establishes ATAS in combination with high-level multi-reference simulations as a spectroscopic technique capable of resolving coupled non-adiabatic electronic-nuclear dynamics in photoexcited molecules with sub-femtosecond resolution.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1063/4.0000102
Entities
People
- Daniel Neumark
- Florian Rott
- Henry Timmers
- Kristina F Chang
- Maurizio Reduzzi
- Regina de Vivie-Riedle
- Stephen R. Leone
- Thomas Schnappinger
- Yuki Kobayashi
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- German Research Foundation
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
- National Science Foundation
- Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry