Conical Intersection Dynamics in NO ₂ Probed by Homodyne High-Harmonic Spectroscopy

Abstract

Conical intersections play a crucial role in the chemistry of most polyatomic molecules, ranging from the simplest bimolecular reactions to the photostability of DNA. The real-time study of the associated electronic dynamics poses a major challenge to the latest techniques of ultrafast measurement. We show that high-harmonic spectroscopy reveals oscillations in the electronic character that occur in nitrogen dioxide when a photoexcited wave packet crosses a conical intersection. At longer delays, we observe the onset of statistical dissociation dynamics. The present results demonstrate that high-harmonic spectroscopy could become a powerful tool to highlight electronic dynamics occurring along non-adiabatic chemical reaction pathways. 1The outcome of chemical reactions is determined by the valence electronic structure of molecules. Therefore, the elucidation of elementary reaction mechanisms requires an understanding of the valence electron dynamics. Recently developed techniques that are efficient in probing valence electron dynamics include attosecond transient absorption (1), extreme ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (XUV-PES) (2), high-order harmonic spectroscopy (HHS) (3-5) and strong-field ionization (6). Both time-resolved PES (7) and time-resolved HHS are sensitive to valence electron dynamics through the molecular photoionization matrix elements.Electronic dynamics in molecules are particularly challenging to observe when they are strongly coupled to nuclear dynamics. Such situations often arise in polyatomic molecules where conical intersections between the potential energy surfaces induce very rapid radiationless transitions at particular nuclear configurations (see inset of Fig. 1) (8, 9). These features channel electronic excitation into atomic motion in such diverse contexts as the primary steps of vision (10) and the dynamics underlying electron transfer and the photostability of DNA bases (11).Here we show that high-harmonic spectroscopy reveals the variations in electronic character during the conical intersection dynamics and the subsequent dissociation of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ). We chose NO 2 , a radical, because of its model status for theories of unimolecular dissociation (12-14) and conical intersection dynamics (15)(16)(17)(18)(19). Our results translate the previously recognized sensitivity of HHS to electronic structure into a tool for elucidating chemical reaction dynamics.High-harmonic spectroscopy can be factored into three steps: removal of an electron by an intense femtosecond laser field, acceleration of the electron in the laser field and photorecombination (20, 21). Each step contributes an amplitude and a phase to the emitted XUV radiation (20,(22)(23)(24)(25). The measurement relies on a coherent detection scheme in a transient grating geometry, using unexcited molecules as a local oscillator (4, 5). It is thus sensitive to 2 both amplitude and phase of the photorecombination matrix elements, a quantity that has recently attracted a lot of interest (26,27). Time-resolved...

Revealing the Cooper minimum ofN2by Molecular Frame High-Harmonic Spectroscopy

“…The good agreement between experiment and theory further evidences that high-harmonic spectroscopy is a measure of field-free photorecombination dipole matrix elements [11,12,27]. The procedure that we have introduced will be particularly important for dynamic imaging of photoinduced chemical reactions [6,7,37] for which little a priori knowledge of the high-harmonic dipole is available. For example, it will be helpful for photoexcitation where we know the angular distribution of excited molecules exactly.…”

“…When measured in the molecular frame and over a wide spectral range, the transition moment allows us to image valence electronic structure [2][3][4] and to follow electronic [5] or chemical dynamics [6,7]. For decades, the photoionization transition moment could be measured using extreme ultraviolet (XUV) radiation produced by a synchrotron [8].…”

High-Harmonic Probing of Electronic Coherence in Dynamically Aligned Molecules

“…The amplitude of the radiation generated in each of these channels is proportional to the population in each state. These pathways have been exploited to time resolve photochemical dynamics [10,11]. In contrast, the two cross-channels (red arrows) read out the relative quantum phases and encode their difference in the phase of the emitted radiation.…”

Two-Pulse Field-Free Orientation Reveals Anisotropy of Molecular Shape Resonance

“…The availability of transiently aligned molecular samples has particularly advanced strong-field and attosecond spectroscopies, providing new insights into the electronic structure of molecules and its temporal evolution [3][4][5][6][7]. High-harmonic spectroscopy (HHS) provides a new access to the rich structures of photoionization continua, such as Cooper minima [8][9][10][11] and shape resonances [11][12][13].…”