Tracking coupled electronic and structural dynamics in condensed phase matter with ultrashort X-ray pulses

Prof. Wojciech Gawelda

(Department of Chemistry, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain; IMDEA-Nanoscience, Madrid, Spain)

With the advent of soft- and hard X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFEL) sources, entirely new scientific opportunities and prospects have been become available in the field of structural studies. One of the most unprecedented features of XFELs is their ability to produce high intensity and fully coherent pulsed X-ray beams, with single pulse duration well below 100 femtoseconds (1 fs =10 -15 s). This property allows dynamical studies of light-matter interactions virtually in any medium on the very fundamental timescales of interatomic motions, from gas-phase, solvated molecules and biomacromolecules to complex strongly correlated solids. In this seminar I will present a state-of-the-art overview of the abovementioned research venues, which highly benefit from the continuous progress in the field of XFEL technology. It will focus on those aspects, which profit most from the very high temporal resolution achievable in time-resolved XFEL experiments in combination with atomic spatial resolution. Some recent examples of femtosecond-resolved XFEL
pump-probe studies on molecular complexes and semiconductor quantum dots will be shown as examples.