Seminars

ChemAtom Seminar: Oriol Vendrell (Aarhus University) Coherence effects in coupled nuclear and electronic dynamics

Coherence effects in coupled nuclear and electronic dynamics
A common paradigm of femtosecond laser experiments is the generation of Franck-Condon nuclear wave packets, i.e. superpositions of vibrational eigenstates, through electronic excitation, resulting in coherent time evolution on one or several coupled potential energy surfaces.  The advent of ultrashort, broadband lasers with pulse durations in the attosecond to few femtosecond range makes it now possible to coherently excite superpositions of two or more electronic states. The electronic and nuclear dynamics started by the laser pulse become now intermingled in a more complex manner as compared to dynamics started in a single electronic state.  In this seminar we will discuss several examples in which the coupling between nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom strongly influences the time evolution of the system and its electronic coherence properties [1-4]. Finally we will look at the other side of the coin, namely how and under what conditions electronic coherence can affect the evolution of nuclear degrees of freedom and to what extent some degree of control can be achieved based on those effects [3].
[1] H. Timmers, Z. Li, et. al.,  Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 113003 (2014)
[2] C. Arnold, O. Vendrell, R. Santra, Phys. Rev. A 95, 033425 (2017)
[3] C. Arnold, O. Vendrell, R. Welsch, R. Santra, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 123001 (2018)
[4] O. Vendrell, Chem. Phys., DOI: 10.1016/j.chemphys.2018.02.008