@article{EckertVazdaCruzOchmannetal.2021,
  author    = {Eckert, Sebastian and Vaz da Cruz, Vin{\´i}cius and Ochmann, Miguel and Ahnen, Inga von and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander and Huse, Nils},
  title     = {Breaking the symmetry of pyrimidine},
  series = {The journal of physical chemistry letters},
  volume    = {12},
  journal   = {The journal of physical chemistry letters},
  number    = {35},
  publisher = {American Chemical Society},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {1948-7185},
  doi       = {10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c01865},
  pages     = {8637 -- 8643},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Symmetry and its breaking crucially define the chemical properties of molecules and their functionality. Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering is a local electronic structure probe reporting on molecular symmetry and its dynamical breaking within the femtosecond scattering duration. Here, we study pyrimidine, a system from the C-2v point group, in an aqueous solution environment, using scattering though its 2a(2) resonance. Despite the absence of clean parity selection rules for decay transitions from in-plane orbitals, scattering channels including decay from the 7b(2) and 11a(1) orbitals with nitrogen lone pair character are a direct probe for molecular symmetry. Computed spectra of explicitly solvated molecules sampled from a molecular dynamics simulation are combined with the results of a quantum dynamical description of the X-ray scattering process. We observe dominant signatures of core-excited Jahn-Teller induced symmetry breaking for resonant excitation. Solvent contributions are separable by shortening of the effective scattering duration through excitation energy detuning.},
  language  = {en}
}