Imaging and Controlling Molecular Dynamics with Ultrashort Laser Pulses

Friday, February 17, 2012: 8:00 AM-9:30 AM
Room 208-209 (VCC West Building)
Ten years ago, A.H. Zewail was awarded the Nobel prize for "femtosecond" chemistry, monitoring atomic motion in chemical reactions with femtosecond(fs) pulses. Modern laser technology generates attosecond (asec) pulses for studying electron motion on its own time-scale. Attosecond science is now considered a major breakthrough in the science of the 21st century. Free electron lasers (FELs) are adding more tools for the study of ultra-fast quantum dynamics in matter with coherent light sources from the near infrared to ultra-short X-ray wavelengths. Chemical, biological, and material sciences have spent over a century on elucidating and relating molecular structures to molecular function. New ultra-short laser pulses are now becoming the essential tools for imaging, visualizing, and controlling ultra-fast asec electron dynamics coupled to fs nuclear dynamics in molecules in such processes as vision, photosynthesis, electron transfer, and so on. The symposium will begin with a review of the issues in measuring coherent electron motion and transfer in photexcitations of complex molecules. Other presentations will deal with new developments and applications of ultra-short laser pulses and coherent FEL sources to measuring, imaging, and controlling ultra-fast quantum dynamics in matter, thus heralding the emergence of a new science: Femto-Attosecond Science.
Organizer:
Andre D. Bandrauk, Universite de Sherbrooke
Co-Organizer:
Paul B. Corkum, University of Ottawa
Moderator:
Andre D. Bandrauk, Universite de Sherbrooke
Discussants:
Andre D. Bandrauk, Universite de Sherbrooke
and Paul B. Corkum, University of Ottawa
Speakers:
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