Preface
Undoubtedly the progress of Molecular Sciences has benefited from the strong interaction with ultrafast laser techniques and developments in the last decades. In many
instances, ultrafast lasers have been employed along with technological advances
as a tool to study molecular systems with the aim to understand their time evolution and, in general, to disentangle the time-resolved behavior of matter. The main
idea behind the scene is to reach the time scales where molecular processes occur
and to visualize their time evolution; that is, femtoseconds for nuclear motion and
attoseconds for electronic motion. Interesting new phenomena have emerged however when this strong interaction between ultrashort ultraintense light and molecules
has been provoked, and this has stimulated in turn new developments both experimental and theoretical to try to understand the new phenomena. This loop between
applications and the appearance of new phenomena is behind the progress of the
field.
This volume of Springer Series in Chemical Physics is conceived to cover the
latest progress on the applications of Ultrafast Technology to Molecular Sciences,
from small molecules to proteomics and molecule-surface interactions, and from
conventional femtosecond laser pulses and pump-probe and charged particle detection techniques to attosecond pulses in the XUV. The attosecond and few-cycle femtosecond applications are covered in the first Chapter written by Marc Vrakking and
co-workers (Chap. 1), where the measurement of molecular frame photoelectron angular distributions of high kinetic energy photoelectrons for small molecules brings
the time evolution of molecular structures in the course of a photochemical event.
The theoretical aspects along these lines come from the Chapter written by Fernando Martin and his co-workers (Chap. 2) focusing on a simple molecular system,
the hydrogen molecule, where state-of-the-art time-dependent theoretical methods
are able to provide a solid groundwork for describing and interpreting the underlying
molecular dynamics observed experimentally. Larger molecules under ultraintense
laser fields are presented in the Chapter written by Tomoya Okino and Kaoru Yamanouchi (Chap. 3), where coincident momentum charged-particle imaging measurements shed light into intense field induced hydrogen atom migration in small
hydrocarbons. The combination between the femtosecond pump-probe technique
vii
Undoubtedly the progress of Molecular Sciences has benefited from the strong interaction with ultrafast laser techniques and developments in the last decades. In many
instances, ultrafast lasers have been employed along with technological advances
as a tool to study molecular systems with the aim to understand their time evolution and, in general, to disentangle the time-resolved behavior of matter. The main
idea behind the scene is to reach the time scales where molecular processes occur
and to visualize their time evolution; that is, femtoseconds for nuclear motion and
attoseconds for electronic motion. Interesting new phenomena have emerged however when this strong interaction between ultrashort ultraintense light and molecules
has been provoked, and this has stimulated in turn new developments both experimental and theoretical to try to understand the new phenomena. This loop between
applications and the appearance of new phenomena is behind the progress of the
field.
This volume of Springer Series in Chemical Physics is conceived to cover the
latest progress on the applications of Ultrafast Technology to Molecular Sciences,
from small molecules to proteomics and molecule-surface interactions, and from
conventional femtosecond laser pulses and pump-probe and charged particle detection techniques to attosecond pulses in the XUV. The attosecond and few-cycle femtosecond applications are covered in the first Chapter written by Marc Vrakking and
co-workers (Chap. 1), where the measurement of molecular frame photoelectron angular distributions of high kinetic energy photoelectrons for small molecules brings
the time evolution of molecular structures in the course of a photochemical event.
The theoretical aspects along these lines come from the Chapter written by Fernando Martin and his co-workers (Chap. 2) focusing on a simple molecular system,
the hydrogen molecule, where state-of-the-art time-dependent theoretical methods
are able to provide a solid groundwork for describing and interpreting the underlying
molecular dynamics observed experimentally. Larger molecules under ultraintense
laser fields are presented in the Chapter written by Tomoya Okino and Kaoru Yamanouchi (Chap. 3), where coincident momentum charged-particle imaging measurements shed light into intense field induced hydrogen atom migration in small
hydrocarbons. The combination between the femtosecond pump-probe technique
vii