Mainz 2026 – scientific programme

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 9: Chirality II

MO 9.1: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 3, 2026, 11:00–11:30, P 110

All-Optical Enantiomeric Conversion Observed in a Femtosecond Molecular Movie — •Nicolas Ladda, Fabian Westmeier, Tonio Rosen, Sudheendran Vasudevan, Simon Ranecky, Sagnik Das, Krishna Singh, Hendrike Braun, Jochen Mikosch, Thomas Baumert, and Arne Senftleben — Institute of Physics and CINSaT, University of Kassel, 34132 Kassel, Germany

We present the first observation of the enantiomeric conversion of an optically excited chiral molecule on the femtosecond timescale. Pumping the chiral molecule (methyl p-tolyl sulfoxide) into an electronically excited state with a deep-UV femtosecond laser pulse creates a vibrational wave packet, that can propagate to the other enantiomeric configuration due to a reduced inversion barrier [1]. By measuring time-resolved photoelectron circular dichroism (PECD), these molecular dynamics can be investigated in the gas phase, which provides an interaction-free environment. Advantageously, PECD, i.e., the forward/backward asymmetry of the photoelectron angular distribution with respect to the direction of propagation of ionizing circularly polarized light, is a strong (~10%) effect and can be studied in an energy-resolved manner using a velocity map imaging spectrometer [2].

[1] W. Sun, I. Kleiner, A. Senftleben, M. Schnell, J. Chem. Phys. 2022, 156, 15, 154304.

[2] N. Böwering, T. Lischke, B. Schmidtke, N. Müller, T. Khalil, U. Heinzmann, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2001, 86, 1187

Keywords: Chirality; Photoelectron Circular Dichroism (PECD); Femtosecond Laser Pulses; Velocity Map Imaging