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Title: Lifetime of electronic coherence after sudden ionization of molecules
Plain: An ultrashort laser pulse can knock out an electron and leave the remaining charge sloshing across the molecule within a few femtoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second). How long this sloshing survives once the atoms start to move is not known.
Precise: For a medium-size organic molecule (for example phenylalanine or a substituted benzene) ionized by an attosecond XUV pulse, compute and measure the decay time $\tau_{coh}$ of the hole-density coherence between the lowest cationic states as nuclear motion and nuclear wavepacket spread are included. The answer is $\tau_{coh}$ with its dependence on molecular size and the number of active vibrational modes.
Settled by: Attosecond pump-probe measurements of hole migration compared with full-dimensional quantum electron-nuclear dynamics for the same molecule.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: value
References: (empty)
Literature status: open
Status note: (empty)
Posed since: (empty)