- Rebholz, Marc;
- Ding, Thomas;
- Despré, Victor;
- Aufleger, Lennart;
- Hartmann, Maximilian;
- Meyer, Kristina;
- Stooß, Veit;
- Magunia, Alexander;
- Wachs, David;
- Birk, Paul;
- Mi, Yonghao;
- Borisova, Gergana Dimitrova;
- da Costa Castanheira, Carina;
- Rupprecht, Patrick;
- Schmid, Georg;
- Schnorr, Kirsten;
- Schröter, Claus Dieter;
- Moshammer, Robert;
- Loh, Zhi-Heng;
- Attar, Andrew R;
- Leone, Stephen R;
- Gaumnitz, Thomas;
- Wörner, Hans Jakob;
- Roling, Sebastian;
- Butz, Marco;
- Zacharias, Helmut;
- Düsterer, Stefan;
- Treusch, Rolf;
- Brenner, Günter;
- Vester, Jonas;
- Kuleff, Alexander I;
- Ott, Christian;
- Pfeifer, Thomas
In this work, we use an extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) free-electron laser (FEL) to resonantly excite the I: 4d5/2-σ∗ transition of a gas-phase di-iodomethane (CH2I2) target. This site-specific excitation generates a 4d core hole located at an iodine site, which leaves the molecule in a well-defined excited state. We subsequently measure the time-dependent absorption change of the molecule with the FEL probe spectrum centered on the same I: 4d resonance. Using ab initio calculations of absorption spectra of a transient isomerization pathway observed in earlier studies, our time-resolved measurements allow us to assign the timescales of the previously reported direct and indirect dissociation pathways. The presented method is thus sensitive to excited-state molecular geometries in a time-resolved manner, following a core-resonant site-specific trigger.