Ultrafast spectroscopy in the ultraviolet: from femtochemistry to attochemistry
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Ultrafast spectroscopy in the ultraviolet: from femtochemistry to attochemistry
Wed, 13/12/2023 - 14:00 to 15:00
Location:
Speaker:
Dr Rocio Borrego Barillas
Affiliation:
CNR-IFN, Italy
Synopsis:
Many molecules of biological interest, such as amino acids or DNA bases, present strong absorption bands in the ultraviolet (UV) spectral range. The primary steps after photo-excitation typically occur in ultrafast time scales - ranging from tens of femtoseconds (fs) down to hundreds of attoseconds – and ultimately determine the system response. The investigation of these processes has been hindered until recently due to technical challenges to access the UV range with enough temporal resolution. In this talk I will present our recent developments on the generation of few-fs UV pulses and their application for time-resolved spectroscopy.
In particular, I will show how UV pump - XUV probe Time-Resolved Photoelectron Spectroscopy (TRPES) with sub-20 fs temporal resolution, in combination with high-level simulations, allows to follow with unprecedented detail the non-adiabatic relaxation of a prototypical molecule, acetylacetone. I will also report on our recent advancement towards the development of an attosecond spectroscopy beamline combining isolated XUV pulses and sub-3 fs UV pulses generated by dispersive wave emission.
Biography:
Dr. Rocío Borrego Varillas is senior researcher at the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council (Italy). She obtained a PhD in Physics at the Universidad de Salamanca in 2013. In the same year she was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship and joined Prof. Cerullo's group at Politecnico di Milano. During her postdoc she developed novel techniques for the generation of ultrashort UV pules and their application to ultrafast molecular dynamics. At present she is responsible of the scientific activity of the laboratories for attosecond spectroscopy in molecules in the Attosecond Research Center (http://attosecond.fisi.polimi.it). Her research interests include few-cycle pulse generation in the UV, ultrafast spectroscopy of biomolecules and sub-femtosecond electron dynamics.