Diffractive molecular orbital tomography

Abstract

High harmonic generation in the interaction of femtosecond lasers with atoms and molecules opens the path to molecular orbital tomography and to probe the electronic dynamics with attosecond-Ångström resolutions. Molecular orbital tomography requires both the amplitude and phase of the high harmonics. Yet the measurement of phases requires sophisticated techniques and represents formidable challenges at present. Here we report a novel scheme, called diffractive molecular orbital tomography, to retrieve the molecular orbital solely from the amplitude of high harmonics without measuring any phase information. We have applied this method to image the molecular orbitals of N${}_2$, CO${}_2$ and C${}_2$H${}_2$. The retrieved orbital is further improved by taking account the correction of Coulomb potential. The diffractive molecular orbital tomography scheme, removing the roadblock of phase measurement, significantly simplifies the molecular orbital tomography procedure and paves an efficient and robust way to the imaging of more complex molecules.

10 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Quantitative Rescattering Theory for high-order harmonic generation from molecules
• X-ray diffraction from isolated and strongly aligned gas-phase molecules with a free-electron laser
• Self-referenced coherent diffraction x-ray movie of Angstrom- and femtosecond-scale atomic motion
• Diffractive imaging of a molecular rotational wavepacket with femtosecond Megaelectronvolt electron pulses
• Spectrally resolved spatiotemporal features of quantum paths in high-order harmonic generation
• Molecular orbital tomography beyond the plane wave approximation
• Limits of the Plane Wave Approximation in the Measurement of Molecular Properties

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Time-dependent population imaging for solid high harmonic generation
• Scaling law of high harmonic generation in the framework of photon channel
• Tomography of asymmetric molecular orbitals with one-color inhomogeneous field
• Quantum path interferences in high-order harmonic generation from aligned diatomic molecules