Molecular Physics seminar

Time-resolved imaging of nuclear motion and tunnelling with sub-femtosecond resolution

by Alejandro Saenz (Humboldt University Berlin)

Europe/Stockholm
FB55

FB55

Description
An appealing aspect of nowadays available ultrashort laser pulses is their potential for time-resolved imaging of quantum dynamics down to the sub-femtosecond time-scale. Due to the high non-linearity of the ionisation process in intense laser pulses, i. e. the exponential dependence of the ionisation probability as a function of the laser electric-field intensity, sub-cycle resolution is possible. Different proposals and exploratory experimental studies exist that aim for the imaging of electronic or nuclear motion using intense ultrashort long-wavelength laser pulses. This talk will concentrate on one scheme that was proposed and experimentally verified to reveal time-resolved imaging of nuclear motion in molecules on the sub-femtosecond time-scale. After an introduction to the underlying physics and its demonstration on the example of molecular hydrogen, an application to ammonia will be presented. It is demonstrated that the proposed experiment allows for a real-time imaging of nuclear quantum tunnelling with an extreme time resolution.