Rafael C. Couto, Vinicius V. Cruz, Emelie Ertan, Sebastian Eckert, Mattis Fondell, Marcus Dantz, Brian Kennedy, Thorsten Schmitt, Annette Pietzsch, Freddy F. Guimaraes, Hans Agren, Michael Odelius, Victor Kimberg, Alexander Föhlisch
- The dynamics of fragmentation and vibration of molecular systems with a large number of coupled degrees of freedom are key aspects for understanding chemical reactivity and properties. Here we present a resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) study to show how it is possible to break down such a complex multidimensional problem into elementary components. Local multimode nuclear wave packets created by X-ray excitation to different core-excited potential energy surfaces (PESs) will act as spatial gates to selectively probe the particular ground-state vibrational modes and, hence, the PES along these modes. We demonstrate this principle by combining ultra-high resolution RIXS measurements for gas-phase water with state-of-the-art simulations.
