Journal article
Time-resolved relaxation and fragmentation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons investigated in the ultrafast XUV-IR regime
- Abstract:
- Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) play an important role in interstellar chemistry and are subject to high energy photons that can induce excitation, ionization, and fragmentation. Previous studies have demonstrated electronic relaxation of parent PAH monocations over 10–100 femtoseconds as a result of beyond-Born-Oppenheimer coupling between the electronic and nuclear dynamics. Here, we investigate three PAH molecules: fluorene, phenanthrene, and pyrene, using ultrafast XUV and IR laser pulses. Simultaneous measurements of the ion yields, ion momenta, and electron momenta as a function of laser pulse delay allow a detailed insight into the various molecular processes. We report relaxation times for the electronically excited PAH*, PAH+* and PAH2+* states, and show the time-dependent conversion between fragmentation pathways. Additionally, using recoil-frame covariance analysis between ion images, we demonstrate that the dissociation of the PAH2+ ions favors reaction pathways involving two-body breakup and/or loss of neutral fragments totaling an even number of carbon atoms.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 3.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-021-26193-z
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 6107
- Publication date:
- 2021-10-20
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-09-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2041-1723
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1204297
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1204297
- Deposit date:
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2021-10-20
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Lee et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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