Heidelberg 2015 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 11: Posters 2: Novelties in Molecular Physics

MO 11.6: Poster

Dienstag, 24. März 2015, 17:00–19:00, C/Foyer

Towards Time-Resolved Structural Imaging of Transition State Dynamics — •Katrin Reininger and Jochen Mikosch — Max-Born-Institut, Berlin

The transition state marks a short time span during a chemical reaction in which molecular structures exist that are neither the reagents nor the reaction products. This is the time when old bonds are broken and new bonds are formed. Due to the difficulty to access the very transient transition state structures in an experiment there are a lot of open questions surrounding transition state dynamics.

We are developing a novel probe that images, one molecule at a time, the time-dependent spatial structure of individual transition states as they evolve on a femto- to picosecond time scale. For this we combine two modern techniques of molecular physics: (i) Reaction precursors are prepared as small ion-dipole complexes of molecular ions with defined and tunable internal temperature. These serve as starting point for inducing transition state dynamics by photodissociation or photodetachment of a chromophore. (ii) Coulomb Explosion Imaging, induced by extremely short and intense infrared laser pulses as a function of time-delay, and it's full coincidence momentum imaging will then be used to follow the dynamics and ultimately to reconstruct the evolving spatial molecular geometry.

It is anticipated that our studies will shed new light on the defining, but also most elusive part of chemical reaction dynamics.