It is known that excitation by visible light of the singlet metal-to-ligand charge-transfer ((1)MLCT) states of Fe(II) complexes leads to population of the lowest-lying high-spin quintet state ((5)T) with unity quantum yield. Here we investigate this so-called spin crossover (SCO) transition in aqueous iron(II)tris(bipyridine). We use pump-probe transient absorption spectroscopy with a high time resolution of <60 fs in the ultraviolet probe range, in which the (5)T state absorbs, and of <40 fs in the visible probe range, in which both the hot MLCT state and the (5)T state absorb. Our results show that the (5)T state is impulsively populated in less than 50 fs, which is the time we measured for the depopulation of the MCLT manifold. We propose that non-totally-symmetric modes mediate the process, possibly high-frequency modes of the bipyridine (bpy) ligand. These results show that even though the SCO process in Fe(II) complexes represents a strongly spin-forbidden (ΔS = 2) two-electron transition, spin flipping occurs at near subvibrational times and is intertwined with the electron and structural dynamics of the system.

Anatase TiO2 is among the most studied materials for light-energy conversion applications, but the nature of its fundamental charge excitations is still unknown. Yet it is crucial to establish whether light absorption creates uncorrelated electron–hole pairs or bound excitons and, in the latter case, to determine their character. Here, by combining steady-state angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry with state-of-the-art ab initio calculations, we demonstrate that the direct optical gap of single crystals is dominated by a strongly bound exciton rising over the continuum of indirect interband transitions. This exciton possesses an intermediate character between the Wannier–Mott and Frenkel regimes and displays a peculiar two-dimensional wavefunction in the three-dimensional lattice. The nature of the higher-energy excitations is also identified. The universal validity of our results is confirmed up to room temperature by observing the same elementary excitations in defect-rich samples (doped single crystals and nanoparticles) via ultrafast two-dimensional deep-ultraviolet spectroscopy.

Tryptophan is commonly used to study protein structure and dynamics, such as protein folding, as a donor in fluorescence resonant energy transfer (FRET) studies. By using ultra-broadband ultrafast two-dimensional (2D) spectroscopy in the ultraviolet (UV) and transient absorption in the visible range, we have disentangled the excited state decay pathways of the tryptophan amino acid residues in ferric myoglobins (MbCN and metMb). Whereas the more distant tryptophan (Trp(7)) relaxes by energy transfer to the heme, Trp(14) excitation predominantly decays by electron transfer to the heme. The excited Trp(14)→heme electron transfer occurs in <40 picoseconds with a quantum yield of more than 60%, over an edge-to-edge distance below ~10 angstroms, outcompeting the FRET process. Our results raise the question of whether such electron transfer pathways occur in a larger class of proteins.

We investigate the ultrafast transient absorption response of tetrakis(μ-pyrophosphito)diplatinate(II), [Pt(μ-POH)] [hereafter abbreviated Pt(pop)], in acetonitrile upon excitation of its lowest singlet A state. Compared with previously reported solvents [van der Veen RM, Cannizzo A, van Mourik F, Vlček A, Jr, Chergui M (2011) 133:305-315], a significant shortening of the intersystem crossing (ISC) time (<1 ps) from the lowest singlet to the lowest triplet state is found, allowing for a transfer of vibrational coherence, observed in the course of an ISC in a polyatomic molecule in solution. Density functional theory (DFT) quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) simulations of Pt(pop) in acetonitrile and ethanol show that high-lying, mostly triplet, states are strongly mixed and shifted to lower energies due to interactions with the solvent, providing an intermediate state (or manifold of states) for the ISC. This suggests that the larger the solvation energies of the intermediate state(s), the shorter the ISC time. Because the latter is smaller than the pure dephasing time of the vibrational wave packet, coherence is conserved during the spin transition. These results underscore the crucial role of the solvent in directing pathways of intramolecular energy flow.

We measured laser-induced-fluorescence (LIF) and beam-depletion (BD) spectra of rubidium atoms (5S-5P transition) on the surface of superfluid helium nanodroplets (M-He_{N} with M=Rb). It is known that when M is a lighter alkali atom electronic excitation always leads to detachment of the excited atom (M;{*}). The dissociation energy, few tens cm;{-1}, comes either as photon excess energy or from the barrierless formation of a M;{*}-He exciplex. We observe that this picture does not hold when M=Rb and the photon excess energy is small: we are able to excite atoms without detaching them from the droplet, thanks to a barrier preventing formation of the exciplex. This system is ideally suited for optical spin pumping in a He nanodroplet, whose achievement we explicitly demonstrate in a pump-probe magnetic circular dichroism experiment.

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We present a broadband two-dimensional transient absorption setup for the UV around 300 nm with a time resolution of 150 fs. A narrowband, frequency tunable pump pulse and a broadband probe pulse are generated from the output of a noncollinear optical parametric amplifier operated at 20 kHz repetition rate and combined in a spectrally resolved transient absorption experiment. The high repetition rate and low noise of the setup allow us to acquire high quality two-dimensional data as a function of time delay with an unsurpassed frequency window of 10,000 and 8000  cm(-1) along the probe and pump axis, respectively. The performance of the setup is demonstrated on 2,5-Diphenyloxazol dissolved in cyclohexane.

The recent identification of strongly bound excitons in room temperature anatase TiO 2 single crystals and nanoparticles underscores the importance of bulk many-body effects in samples used for applications. Here, for the first time, we unravel the interplay between many-body interactions and correlations in highly-excited anatase TiO 2 nanoparticles using ultrafast two-dimensional deepultraviolet spectroscopy. With this approach, under non-resonant excitation, we disentangle the optical nonlinearities contributing to the bleach of the lowest direct exciton peak. This allows us to clock the ultrafast timescale of the hot electron thermalization in the conduction band with unprecedented temporal resolution, which we determine to be < 50 fs, due to the strong electronphonon coupling in the material. Our findings call for the design of alternative resonant excitation schemes in photonics and nanotechnology.1 arXiv:1703.07818v2 [cond-mat.mes-hall] 13 Jan 2018In the last decades, anatase TiO 2 has attracted huge interest as one of the most promising materials for a variety of challenging applications, ranging from photocatalysis [1,2] and photovoltaics [3] to sensors [4,5]. Since these technologies involve charge transport, thermalization and localization, they call for studies of the fast electron and hole dynamics, which provide a deep knowledge of the nature of the photogenerated/injected charge carriers and of the energy balance therein. These processes intimately depend on the details of the electronic structure and the presence of many body-effects in the material. Since anatase TiO 2 is a d 0 transition metal oxide, strong electron-electron correlations do not play a substantial role in the electronic structure [6]. Hence, this solid can be classified within the simple band insulator scheme, in which the forbidden energy gap arises as a result of band theory and is not a consequence of the strong on-site Coulomb interaction. However, different to conventional band insulators, anatase TiO 2 represents a peculiar example in which electron-phonon interaction and electron-hole correlation become relatively strong and influence the optical spectra. On the one hand, the presence of a moderately large electron-phonon coupling in anatase TiO 2 has often been invoked to interpret experimental results naturally pointing to the polaronic (self-trapped) picture [7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Notable examples include the low temperature green photoluminescence (PL) due to self-trapped excitons [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and the room temperature electron mobilities whose values are limited by strong scattering with phonons [10]. On the other hand, many-body correlations have been thought to be negligible in this material and, as such, they remained widely unexplored. Recently, by employing state-of-the-art experimental [21] and computational techniques [21][22][23][24][25], the substantial role of electron-hole Coulomb correlations was unravelled in the anatase polymorph of TiO 2 . Strongly bound direct excitons were...