Tracing attosecond electron motion inside a molecule

Abstract

By using a planar model of homonuclear molecule, we present a theoretical study of photoelectron emission of a homonuclear molecule by an attosecond xuv pulse. Through a pump-probe scheme, we show that attosecond electron motion inside the molecule can be mapped out by measuring the interference fringe visibility of the angle-resolved photoelectron momentum distributions. In addition, the visibility (V ) depends on the degree of which-path information (P). The inequality, P2+V 2 ≤ 1, which quantifies the wave-particle duality, is verified. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.