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Ultrafast electron diffractive imaging of the dissociation of pre-excited molecules

Yanwei Xiong*, Haoran Zhao, Sri Bhavya Muvva, Cuong Le, Lauren F. Heald, Jackson Lederer, and Martin Centurion†

  • *Contact author: yxiong3@unl.edu
  • †Contact author: martin.centurion@unl.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013064 – Published 21 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/n9d9-7wdh

Abstract

Gas phase ultrafast electron diffraction (GUED) has become a powerful technique to directly observe the structural dynamics of photoexcited molecules. GUED reveals information about the nuclear motions that is complementary to the information on the electronic states provided by spectroscopic measurements. GUED experiments so far have utilized a single laser pulse to excite the molecules and an electron pulse to probe the dynamics. This limits the excited states that can be studied to only those that can be reached by absorption of a photon from the ground state or in some cases simultaneous absorption of multiple photons. A broader class of experiments and dynamics can be accessed using two time-delayed laser pulses to access unexplored regions of the potential energy surfaces. As a proof-of-principle experiment using a double excitation, we studied the photodissociation of trifluoroiodomethane molecules that are pre-excited with an infrared (800 nm) femtosecond laser pulse before photodissociation is triggered with an ultraviolet (266 nm) femtosecond laser pulse. We have observed significant differences in the dissociation dynamics, with pre-excitation resulting in a slower dissociation process. This capability can offer insights into the evolution of nuclear wave packets in regions of the excited potential energy surface that are inaccessible in single-photon excitation. We present a methodology to carry out the measurement, analyze, and interpret the data that could be applied to a broad class of experiments.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 013064– Published 21 January, 2026
  • Received 15 September 2025
  • Accepted 17 December 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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