Wave packet dynamics in molecular excited electronic states

Abstract

We theoretically explore the use of UV pump-UV probe schemes to resolve in time the dynamics of nuclear wave packets in excited electronic states of the hydrogen molecule. The pump pulse ignites the dynamics in singly excited states, that will be probed after a given time delay by a second identical pulse that will ionize the molecule. The field-free molecular dynamics is first explored by analyizing the autocorrelation function for the pumped wave packet and the excitation probabilities. We investigate both energy and angle differential ionization probabilities and demonstrate that the asymmetry induced in the electron angular distributions gives a direct map of the time evolution of the pumped wave packet.