Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering Applied to Atoms and Molecules

The Swedish Research Council reached a decision on November 4, 2021 on project grants and starting grants within Natural and Engineering Sciences. The Department of Physics and Astronomy is granted 44 160 000 SEK for the period 2021-2025 for in total nine project grants and three starting grants. The projects will begin during 2021.

Read more about the Swedish Research Council's grants within Natural and Engineering Sciences 2021

Project title: Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering Applied to Atoms and Molecules
Main applicant: Jan-Erik Rubensson, Division of X-ray Photon Science
Grant amount: 4 000 000 SEK for the period 2022-2025

Resonant Inelastic Soft X-ray Scattering (RIXS) spectroscopy and related experimental methods are applied to atoms, molecules, liquids and molecular materials. The most important assets of the RIXS process are Ångström-scale site-specificity, access to the femtosecond time scale, and the symmetry selectivity imposed by the dipole approximation. Two new RIXS facilities are about to come into operation: First, the VERITAS endstation at the MAX IV laboratory uses the outstanding brilliance of the diffraction-limited 3-GeV storage ring to refine the RIXS technique, especially concerning energy resolution. Second, a 1D imaging spectrometer installed as a Swedish in-kind contribution at the European XFEL will allow for non-linear and time-resolved X-ray spectroscopy.

These facilities promise access to interactions that have hitherto been hidden to X-ray methodology. In this project we will use the new opportunities to gain information about the evolution of the molecular electronic-vibronic wavefunctions. The role of spin-orbit coupling, electronic-vibronic coupling and decoherence during the development of wavefunctions far from equilibrium, close to barriers and conical intersections will be addressed in a unique way. Dynamics is influenced and controlled in femtosecond pump-probe experiments. The short intense XFEL pulses let us aim for techniques based on the stimulated RIXS process with the goal to establish coherent methods in the X-ray range.