Femtosecond Stimulated Raman Spectroscopy (FSRS) signals that monitor the excited state conical intersections dynamics of acrolein are simulated. An effective time dependent Hamiltonian for two C-H vibrational marker bands is constructed on the fly using a local mode expansion combined with a semi-classical surface hopping simulation protocol. The signals are obtained by a direct forward and backward propagation of the vibrational wave function on a numerical grid. Earlier work is extended to fully incorporate the anharmonicities and intermode couplings.

We present a unified description for time-resolved electron and photon scattering spectroscopies from molecules prepared in nonstationary states. Signals are expressed in terms of superoperator Green's functions and a systematic procedure for treating various degrees of freedom consistently at different levels of theory is developed. The standard Fermi Golden Rule expressions for photoelectron spectra, which are limited to broad, slowly-varying signals, are obtained as a limiting case of our more general theory that applies to broader parameter regimes.

Strong coupling of molecules to the vacuum field of micro cavities can modify the potential energy surfaces thereby opening new photophysical and photochemical reaction pathways. While the influence of laser fields is usually described in terms of classical field, coupling to the vacuum state of a cavity has to be described in terms of dressed photon-matter states (polaritons) which require quantized fields. We present a derivation of the non-adiabatic couplings for single molecules in the strong coupling regime suitable for the calculation of the dressed state dynamics. The formalism allows to use quantities readily accessible from quantum chemistry codes like the adiabatic potential energy surfaces and dipole moments to carry out wave packet simulations in the dressed basis. The implications for photochemistry are demonstrated for a set of model systems representing typical situations found in molecules.

We demonstrate how the wavelet transform, which is a powerful tool for compression, filtering, and scaling analysis of signals, may be used to separate large- and short-scale electron density features in X-ray diffraction patterns. Wavelets can isolate the electron density associated with delocalized bonds from the much stronger background of highly localized core electrons. The wavelet-processed signals clearly reveal the bond formation and breaking in the early steps of the photoinduced pericyclic ring opening reaction of 1,3-cyclohexadiene, which are not resolved in the bare signal.

We examine time-resolved X-ray diffraction from molecules in the gas phase which undergo nonadiabatic avoided-crossing dynamics involving strongly coupled electrons and nuclei. Several contributions to the signal are identified, representing (in decreasing strength) elastic scattering, contributions of the electronic coherences created by nonadiabatic couplings in the avoided crossing regime, and inelastic scattering. The former probes the charge density and delivers direct information on the evolving molecular geometry. The latter two contributions are weaker and carry spatial information through the transition charge densities (off-diagonal elements of the charge-density operator). Simulations are presented for the nonadiabatic harpooning process in the excited state of sodium fluoride.

Recently developed circularly polarized X-ray light sources can probe the ultrafast chiral electronic and nuclear dynamics through spatially localized resonant core transitions. We present simulations of time-resolved circular dichroism signals given by the difference of left and right circularly polarized X-ray probe transmission following an excitation by a circularly polarized optical pump with the variable time delay. Application is made to formamide which is achiral in the ground state and assumes two chiral geometries upon optical excitation to the first valence excited state. Probes resonant with various K-edges (C, N, and O) provide different local windows onto the parity breaking geometry change thus revealing the enantiomer asymmetry.

This submission is a comment on an article that had previously appeared in Phys. Rev. Lett.

Free-electron laser hard X-ray light sources can provide high fluence, femtosecond pulses, enabling the time-resolved probing of structural dynamics and elementary relaxation processes in molecules. Traditional X-ray elastic scattering from crystals in the ground state consists of sharp Bragg diffraction peaks that arise from pairs of molecules and reveal the ground state charge density. Scattering of ultrashort X-ray pulses from gases, liquids, and even single molecules is more complex and involves both single- and two- molecule contributions, diffuse (non-Bragg) features, elastic and inelastic components, contributions of electronic coherences in nonstationary states, and interferences between scattering off different states (heterodyne detection). We present a unified description that covers all these processes and discuss their relative magnitudes for gas-phase NaI. Conditions for the observation of holographic (heterodyne) interference, which has been recently discussed [1], are clarified.

We demonstrate how the wavelet transform, which is a powerful tool for compression, filtering, and scaling analysis of signals, may be used to separate large- and short-scale electron density features in X-ray diffraction patterns. Wavelets can isolate the electron density associated with delocalized bonds from the much stronger background of highly localized core electrons. The wavelet-processed signals clearly reveal the bond formation and breaking in the early steps of the photoinduced pericyclic ring opening reaction of 1,3-cyclohexadiene, which are not resolved in the bare signal.