The quantum mechanical motion of electrons in molecules and solids occurs on the sub-femtosecond timescale. Consequently, the study of ultrafast electronic phenomena requires the generation of laser pulses shorter than 1 fs and of sufficient intensity to interact with their target with high probability.Probing these dynamics with atomic-site specificity requires the extension of sub-femtosecond pulses to the soft X-ray spectral region. Here we report the generation of isolated GW-scale soft X-ray attosecond pulses with an X-ray free-electron laser. Our source has a pulse energy that is six orders of magnitude larger than any other source of isolated attosecond pulses in the soft X-ray spectral region, with a peak power in the tens of gigawatts. This unique combination of high intensity, high photon energy and short pulse duration enables the investigation of electron dynamics with X-ray non-linear spectroscopy and single-particle imaging.their assistance in designing, constructing and installing the XLEAP wiggler. We also acknowledge the SLAC Accelerator Operations group, and the Mechanical and Electrical engineering divisions of the SLAC Accelerator Directorate, especially

well-established technique used for the study of mechanisms of laser-induced molecular ionization and decomposition. It measures statistical correlations between fluctuating signals of pairs of detected species (ions, fragments, electrons). A positive correlation identifies pairs of products originating from the same dissociation or ionization event. A major challenge for covariance-mapping spectroscopy is accessing decompositions of large polyatomic molecules, where true physical correlations are overwhelmed by spurious signals of no physical significance induced by fluctuations in experimental parameters. As a result, successful applications of covariance mapping have so far been restricted to low-mass systems, e.g., organic molecules of around 50 daltons (Da). Partial-covariance mapping was suggested to tackle the problem of spurious correlations by taking into account the independently measured fluctuations in the experimental conditions. However, its potential has never been realized for the decomposition of large molecules, because in these complex situations, determining and continuously monitoring multiple experimental parameters affecting all the measured signals simultaneously becomes unfeasible. We introduce, through deriving theoretically and confirming experimentally, a conceptually new type of partial-covariance mapping-self-correcting partial-covariance spectroscopy-based on a parameter extracted from the measured spectrum itself. We use the readily available total ion count as the selfcorrecting partial-covariance parameter, thus eliminating the challenge of determining experimental parameter fluctuations in covariance measurements of large complex systems. The introduced selfcorrecting partial covariance enables us to successfully resolve correlations of molecules as large as 10 3-10 4 Da, 2 orders of magnitude above the state of the art. This opens new opportunities for mechanistic studies of large molecule decompositions through revealing their fragment-fragment correlations. Moreover, we demonstrate that self-correcting partial covariance is applicable to solving the inverse problem: reconstruction of a molecular structure from its fragment spectrum, within twodimensional partial-covariance mass spectrometry.

The recent demonstration of isolated attosecond pulses from an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) opens the possibility for probing ultrafast electron dynamics at X-ray wavelengths.An established experimental method for probing ultrafast dynamics is X-ray transient absorption spectroscopy, where the X-ray absorption spectrum is measured by scanning the central photon energy and recording the resultant photoproducts. The spectral bandwidth inherent to attosecond pulses is wide compared to the resonant features typically probed, which generally precludes the application of this technique in the attosecond regime. In this paper we propose and demonstrate a new technique to conduct transient absorption spectroscopy with broad bandwidth attosecond pulses with the aid of ghost imaging, recovering sub-bandwidth resolution in photoproduct-based absorption measurements.

Using covariance analysis methods, we study the fragmentation dynamics of multiply ionized 1- and 2-iodopropane. Signatures of isomer-specific nuclear motion occurring during sequential fragmentation pathways are identified.

In quantum systems, coherent superpositions of electronic states evolve on ultrafast time scales (few femtoseconds to attoseconds; 1 attosecond = 0.001 femtoseconds = 10 −18 seconds), leading to a time-dependent charge density. Here we performed time-resolved measurements using attosecond soft x-ray pulses produced by a free-electron laser, to track the evolution of a coherent core-hole excitation in nitric oxide. Using an additional circularly polarized infrared laser pulse, we created a clock to time-resolve the electron dynamics and demonstrated control of the coherent electron motion by tuning the photon energy of the x-ray pulse. Core-excited states offer a fundamental test bed for studying coherent electron dynamics in highly excited and strongly correlated matter.

The photodissociation dynamics of strong-field ionized methyl iodide (\ce{CH3I}) were probed using intense extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation produced by the SPring-8 Angstrom Compact free electron LAser (SACLA). Strong-field ionization and...

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Two-dimensional partial covariance mass spectrometry (2D-PC-MS) exploits the inherent fluctuations of fragment ion abundances across a series of tandem mass spectra, to identify correlated pairs of fragment ions produced along the same fragmentation pathway of the same parent (e.g., peptide) ion. Here, we apply 2D-PC-MS to the analysis of intact protein ions in a standard linear ion trap mass analyzer, using the fact that the fragment–fragment correlation signals are much more specific to the biomolecular sequence than one-dimensional (1D) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) signals at the same mass accuracy and resolution. We show that from the distribution of signals on a 2D-PC-MS map it is possible to extract the charge state of both parent and fragment ions without resolving the isotopic envelope. Furthermore, the 2D map of fragment–fragment correlations naturally separates the products of the primary decomposition pathways of the molecular ions from those of the secondary ones. We access this spectral information using an adapted version of the Hough transform. We demonstrate the successful identification of highly charged, intact protein molecules bypassing the need for high mass resolution. Using this technique, we also perform the in silico deconvolution of the overlapping fragment ion signals from two co-isolated and co-fragmented intact proteins, demonstrating a viable new method for the concurrent mass spectrometric identification of a mixture of intact protein ions from the same fragment ion spectrum.