Oscillatory Photoelectron Signal of N-Methylmorpholine as a Test Case for the Algebraic-Diagrammatic Construction Method of Second Order

Motivated by recent progress in the application of time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (TRPES) to molecular Rydberg states, we report herein a detailed assessment of the performance of the second-order algebraic diagrammatic construction (ADC(2)) method in the simulation of their TRPES spectra. As the test case, we employ the tertiary aliphatic amine N-methylmorpholine (NMM), which is notable for the fact that the signal of its 3s state exhibits long-lived oscillations along the electron binding energy axis. The relaxation process of photoexcited NMM is simulated via the Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics method, and the resulting TRPES spectrum is generated on the basis of ionization energies and approximate Dyson orbital norms calculated with the continuum orbital technique. On the whole, the simulated TRPES spectrum achieves satisfactory agreement with experiment, which suggests that the ADC(2) method provides a realistic description of the potential energy surfaces of the relevant excited and ionized states. In particular, the simulations reproduce the fine oscillatory structure of the signal of the 3s state, and provide evidence to the effect that it results from a coherent vibrational wavepacket evolving along the deformation modes of the six-membered ring. However, it is found that ADC(2) underestimates electron binding energies by up to a few tenths of an electronvolt. The case of NMM demonstrates the usefulness of ADC(2) as a tool to aid the interpretation of the TRPES spectra of large organic molecules.