Enhancement of strong-field multiple ionization in the vicinity of the conical intersection in 1,3-cyclohexadiene ring opening

Real-time observation of the Woodward-Hoffmann rule for 1,3-cyclohexadiene by femtosecond soft X-ray transient absorption

The stereochemistry of pericyclic reactions is explained by orbital symmetry conservation, referred to as the Woodward-Hoffmann (WH) rule. Although this rule has been verified using the structures of reactants and products, the temporal evolution of the orbital symmetry during the reaction has not been clarified. Herein, we used femtosecond soft X-ray transient absorption spectroscopy to elucidate the thermal pericyclic reaction of 1,3-cyclohexadiene (CHD) molecules, i.e., their isomerization to 1,3,5-hexatriene. In the present experimental scheme, the ring-opening reaction is driven by the thermal vibrational energy induced by photoexcitation to the Rydberg states at 6.2 eV and subsequent femtosecond relaxation to the ground state of CHD molecules. The direction of the ring opening, which can be conrotatory or disrotatory, was the primary focus, and the WH rule predicts the disrotatory pathway in the thermal process. We observed the shifts in K-edge absorption of the carbon atom from the 1s orbital to vacant molecular orbitals around 285 eV at a delay between 340 and 600 fs. Furthermore, a theoretical investigation predicts that the shifts depend on the molecular structures along the reaction pathways and the observed shifts in induced absorption are attributed to the structural change in the disrotatory pathway. This confirms that the orbital symmetry is dynamically conserved in the ring-opening reaction of CHD molecules as predicted using the WH rule.

Structural dynamics of photochemical reactions probed by time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy using high harmonic pulses

Femtosecond ring-opening dynamics of 1,3-cyclohexadiene (CHD) in gas phase upon two-photon excitation at 400 nm (=3.1 eV) was investigated by time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy using 42 nm (=29.5 eV) high harmonic photons probing the dynamics of the lower-lying occupied molecular orbitals (MOs), which are the fingerprints of the molecular structure. After 500 fs, the photoelectron intensity of the MO constituting the C[double bond, length as m-dash]C sigma bond (σ_{C[double bond, length as m-dash]C}) of CHD was enhanced, while that of the MO forming the C-C sigma bond (σ_CC) of CHD was decreased. The changes in the photoelectron spectra suggest that the ring of CHD opens to form a 1,3,5-hexatriene (HT) after 500 fs. The dynamics of the σ_{C[double bond, length as m-dash]C} and σ_CC bands between 200 and 500 fs reflects the ring deformation to a conical intersection between the 2¹A and 1¹A potential energy surfaces prior to the ring-opening reaction.

Strong-field dissociative double ionization of acetylene

We investigate dissociative double ionization of acetylene, one of the smallest organic molecules yet with a rich electronic structure, in strong laser fields by measuring two fragment ions and two electrons in coincidence. The two-body fragmentation channels are dominated by the removal of electrons from the lower-lying molecular orbitals rather than from the highest occupied one. The electron localization-assisted enhanced ionization mechanism plays a central role for the strong-field deprotonation ionization of acetylene by releasing the second electron from the up-field potential well of the hydrogen site at the internuclear distance near twice the equilibrium value of the C-H bond.