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Updated: Jun 13, 2026

An Experimental Protocol for Femtosecond NIR/UV - XUV Pump-Probe Experiments with Free-Electron Lasers
Published on: October 23, 2018
Probing ultrafast internal conversion of o-xylene via femtosecond time-resolved photoelectron imaging
Yuzhu Liu1, Bifeng Tang, Huan Shen
1State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences-Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Wuhan, Hubei 430071, PR China.
Abstract:
The dynamics of excited states in o-xylene molecules has been studied by femtosecond time-resolved photoelectron imaging coupled with time-resolved mass spectroscopy. The ultrafast internal conversion from the S(2) state to the vibrationally hot S(1) state on timescale of 60 fs is observed on real time. The secondarily populated high vibronic S(1) state deactivates further to the S(0) state on timescale of 9.85 ps. Interestingly, the lifetime of the low vibronic S(1) state is much longer, extrapolated to ~12.7 ns. The great differences of lifetime of different vibronic S(1) state are due to their different radiationless dynamics.

