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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Photoemission chronoscopy of the iodoalkanes

Christian A. Schröder*, Maximilian Pollanka, Pascal Freisinger, Matthias Ostner, Maximilian Forster, Sven-Joachim Paul, and Reinhard Kienberger

  • Chair for Laser and X-Ray Physics E11, Department of Physics, TUM School of Natural Sciences, Technische Universität München, James-Franck-Str. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany

  • *Contact author: christian.schroeder@tum.de
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Phys. Rev. A 112, L051104 – Published 18 November, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/vxnp-42jr

Abstract

Time delays in photoemission are on the order of attoseconds and have been experimentally determined in atoms, molecules, and solids. Their magnitude and energy dependence are expected to yield fundamental insights into the properties of the systems in which they are measured. In a recent study Biswas et al. [Nat. Phys. 16, 778 (2020)] determined the absolute photoemission time of the I4d level in iodoethane via attosecond streaking spectroscopy, finding the presence of a functional group to increase the photoemission time delay, suggesting a correlation between the size of the functional group and time delay based on a semiclassical calculation. Here we experimentally study the dependence of the I4d photoemission time on the functional group in the iodoalkanes from iodomethane up to 2-iodobutane at three photon energies across the giant resonance in the I4d→ɛf photoemission channel, finding that the presence alone of a functional group does not necessarily increase the photoemission delay, and that overall no clear correlation between its size and the photoemission time delay can be established.

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Phys. Rev. A 112, L051104– Published 18 November, 2025
  • Received 4 April 2025
  • Accepted 8 October 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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