Abstract

Molecules often fragment after photoionization in the gas phase. Usually, this process can only be investigated spectroscopically as long as there exists electron correlation between the photofragments. Important parameters, like their kinetic energy after separation, cannot be investigated. We are reporting on a femtosecond time-resolved Auger electron spectroscopy study concerning the photofragmentation dynamics of thymine. We observe the appearance of clearly distinguishable signatures from thymine′s neutral photofragment isocyanic acid. Furthermore, we observe a time-dependent shift of its spectrum, which we can attribute to the influence of the charged fragment on the Auger electron. This allows us to map our time-dependent dataset onto the fragmentation coordinate. The time dependence of the shift supports efficient transformation of the excess energy gained from photoionization into kinetic energy of the fragments. Our method is broadly applicable to the investigation of photofragmentation processes.

Details

Title
Observing Femtosecond Fragmentation Using Ultrafast X-ray-Induced Auger Spectra
Author
Wolf, Thomas J A 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Holzmeier, Fabian 2 ; Wagner, Isabella 3 ; Berrah, Nora 4 ; Bostedt, Christoph 5 ; Bozek, John 6 ; Bucksbaum, Phil 7 ; Coffee, Ryan 8 ; Cryan, James 1 ; Farrell, Joe 1 ; Feifel, Raimund 9 ; Martinez, Todd J 10   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; McFarland, Brian 1 ; Mucke, Melanie 11 ; Nandi, Saikat 12 ; Tarantelli, Francesco 13   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Fischer, Ingo 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Gühr, Markus 14 

 Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA 
 Synchrotron SOLEIL, L'Orme des Merisiers, Saint-Aubin, BP 48, 91192 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France; Institut für Physikalische & Theoretische Chemie, Universität Würzburg, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany 
 Institut für Physikalische & Theoretische Chemie, Universität Würzburg, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany 
 Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, 2152 Hillside Road, Storrs, CT 06269, USA 
 Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94720, USA; Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 Cass Ave, Lemont, IL 60439, USA; Department of Physics and Astronomy, 2145 Sheridan Road, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA 
 Synchrotron SOLEIL, L'Orme des Merisiers, Saint-Aubin, BP 48, 91192 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France; Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94720, USA 
 Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA; Departments of Physics and Applied Physics, Stanford University, 382 Via Pueblo Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA 
 Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94720, USA 
 Department of Physics, University of Gothenburg, SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden 
10  Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA; Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, 333 Campus Drive, Stanford, CA 94305, USA 
11  Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 516, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden 
12  Synchrotron SOLEIL, L'Orme des Merisiers, Saint-Aubin, BP 48, 91192 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France; Department of Physics, Lund University, P. O. Box 118, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden 
13  Department of Chemistry, Biology and Biotechnology, University of Perugia, 06123 Perugia, Italy 
14  Stanford PULSE Institute, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA; Institut für Physik und Astronomie, Universität Potsdam, 14476 Potsdam, Germany 
First page
681
Publication year
2017
Publication date
2017
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20763417
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2533529955
Copyright
© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.