Detecting Electron Motion in Atoms and Molecules

Authors

Hua-Chieh Shao, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Anthony F. Starace, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

12-21-2010

Comments

Published in Physical Review Letters 105, 263201 (2010); week ending 31 DECEMBER 2010; DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.263201 Copyright 2010 The American Physical Society. Used by permission.

Abstract

The detection of spatial and temporal electronic motion by scattering of subfemtosecond pulses of 10 keV electrons from coherent superpositions of electronic states of both H and T⁺₂ is investigated. For the H atom, we predict changes in the diffraction images that reflect the time-dependent effective radius of the electronic charge density. For an aligned T⁺₂ molecule, the diffraction image changes reflect the time-dependent localization or delocalization of the electronic charge density.