Filming the Molecular Movies with High Harmonic Generation

Visualizing molecular structure and dynamics gives an intuitionistic insight into understanding molecular dynamics and chemical reactions. It is one ultimate goal in ultrafast optics.

To get the real-time evolution of the electron dynamics in molecules, i.e., a molecular movie, one needs to capture the snapshot electron wavepacket effectively. In the past decades, lots of efforts have been made to develop imaging methods with ultrashort X-ray pulses and electron pulses. The recent advent of attosecond pulse with high harmonic generation has made it possible to probe the electron dynamics in molecules (or even in solids) with unprecedented attosecond resolutions. Such an achievement of attosecond pulse has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics last year.

In this webinar, Pengfei Lan will introduce the recent development of attosecond pulse generation and the ultrafast spectroscopy method for probing the molecular dynamics. Moreover, Prof. Lan will report his recent work about how to monitor the time evolution of the internuclear distance of H2, D2 molecules and the geometry structure of NH3, O2, N2 molecules from high harmonic generation and demonstrate how to probe the charge migration in N2, CO2, C2H2 molecules with a resolution of sub-100 attosecond.

Subject Matter Level: Intermediate - Assumes basic knowledge of the topic

What You Will Learn:
• How to generate intense/compact/coherent soft x-ray attosecond pulses
• How to probe the molecular dynamics with attosecond pulse/high harmonic spectroscopy

Who Should Attend:
• Researchers on attosecond science and technology
• Graduate students on attosecond science

About the Presenter: Pengfei Lan from Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Pengfei Lan is a professor of Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics in Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). He received his Bachelor and Doctor degrees from HUST in 2004 and 2009, respectively. After that, he worked in RIKEN until 2013, then he returned back to HUST. He has worked on the theory and experiment of attosecond physics, including the generation of high harmonics and attosecond pulse, probe the molecular structure and ultrafast dynamics with high-harmonic spectroscopy, high harmonic generation and attosecond physics in solids. He is a Member of the Optica, Chinese Physics Society and Chinese Optical Society.