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SYCE: Symposium Coulomb Explosion Imaging
SYCE 1: Coulomb-Explosion Imaging
SYCE 1.3: Invited Talk
Tuesday, March 12, 2024, 12:00–12:30, Paulussaal
Time-resolved Coulomb Explosion Imaging using X-ray Free-Electron Lasers — •Till Jahnke — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany
Recording real-time movies of dynamical processes in molecules, as, for example, progressing chemical reactions, has been a driving force for many disciplines in fundamental sciences during the last decades. A comparably new experimental technique that addresses single molecules in the gas phase and that involve coincident single-particle detection for imaging these dynamics is Coulomb explosion imaging. This approach uses (for example) ultrashort light pulses to (heavily) fragment the inspected molecules in order to gather such information from the breakup pattern.
X-ray free-electron lasers are able to produce ultrashort light pulses with highest intensity, which are perfectly suitable to perform measurements along these lines. In particular, these light sources allow for time-resolved studies in a pump-probe scheme by adding ultrashort UV pulses that are synchronized with the X-ray flashes (or by employing X-ray pump/X-ray probe schemes). Since almost five years a dedicated COLTRIMS reaction microscope [1,2] is available at the SQS-instrument of the European X-ray free-electron laser, which was used recently to perform time-resolved Coulomb explosion imaging measurements. Some examples will be presented in the talk.
[1] J. Ullrich et al., Rep. Prog. Phys. 66, 1463(2003).
[2] T. Jahnke et al., JESRP 141, 229(2004)
Keywords: Coulomb explosion imaging; COLTRIMS reaction microscope; Free-electron lasers; Molecular dynamics; Pump-probe experiments