Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 19: Electronic Spectroscopy

MO 19.4: Talk

Thursday, March 26, 2015, 15:30–15:45, PH/HS1

Non-Adiabatic Relaxation of Multi-Electronic Dynamics in Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons — •Martin Galbraith¹, Thomas Barillot², Victor Despre², Jesse Klei¹, Alexander Kuleff³, Vincent Loriot², Susanta Mahapatra⁴, Alexandre Marciniak², Jochen Mikosch¹, Samala Nagaprasad Reddy⁴, Arnaud Rouzee¹, Christopher Smeenk¹, Alexander Tielens⁵, Chung-Hsin Yang¹, Nickolai Zhavoronkov¹, Marc Vrakking¹, and Franck Lepine² — ¹Max-Born-Institut, Berlin, Germany — ²Institut Lumiere Matiere, Universite Lyon 1, Villeurbanne Cedex, France — ³Universitaet Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany — ⁴University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India — ⁵Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

We present experimental evidence for an ultrafast relaxation mechanism that follows absorption of an XUV photon and is general for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Highly excited electronic states are created where electron correlation effects play a dominant role. The excitation of shake-up states by ionisation is followed by non-adiabatic relaxation dynamics on a time scale of 10s of fs. Various PAHs and their building block benzene have been studied with XUV pulses from high-harmonic generation and an infrared probe pulse, leading to a time resolution down to sub-10 fs. The XUV-induced photochemistry of PAHs is of great interest in astrophysics due to their long-debated role in the origin of the diffuse interstellar bands. The satellite states in PAHs make these molecules interesting candidates for investigating attosecond hole migration following ionisation.