@article{WolfSanchezYangetal.2019,
  author    = {Wolf, Thomas J. A. and Sanchez, David M. and Yang, J. and Parrish, R. M. and Nunes, J. P. F. and Centurion, M. and Coffee, R. and Cryan, J. P. and G{\"u}hr, Markus and Hegazy, Kareem and Kirrander, Adam and Li, R. K. and Ruddock, J. and Shen, Xiaozhe and Vecchione, T. and Weathersby, S. P. and Weber, Peter M. and Wilkin, K. and Yong, Haiwang and Zheng, Q. and Wang, X. J. and Minitti, Michael P. and Martinez, Todd J.},
  title     = {The photochemical ring-opening of 1,3-cyclohexadiene imaged by ultrafast electron diffraction},
  series = {Nature chemistry},
  volume    = {11},
  journal   = {Nature chemistry},
  number    = {6},
  publisher = {Nature Publ. Group},
  address   = {London},
  issn      = {1755-4330},
  doi       = {10.1038/s41557-019-0252-7},
  pages     = {504 -- 509},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {The ultrafast photoinduced ring-opening of 1,3-cyclohexadiene constitutes a textbook example of electrocyclic reactions in organic chemistry and a model for photobiological reactions in vitamin D synthesis. Although the relaxation from the photoexcited electronic state during the ring-opening has been investigated in numerous studies, the accompanying changes in atomic distance have not been resolved. Here we present a direct and unambiguous observation of the ring-opening reaction path on the femtosecond timescale and subangstrom length scale using megaelectronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction. We followed the carbon-carbon bond dissociation and the structural opening of the 1,3-cyclohexadiene ring by the direct measurement of time-dependent changes in the distribution of interatomic distances. We observed a substantial acceleration of the ring-opening motion after internal conversion to the ground state due to a steepening of the electronic potential gradient towards the product minima. The ring-opening motion transforms into rotation of the terminal ethylene groups in the photoproduct 1,3,5-hexatriene on the subpicosecond timescale.},
  language  = {en}
}