21–25 Sept 2026
Paul Scherrer Institut
Europe/Zurich timezone

NIR-laser induced dressing signatures in helium nanodroplets probed by coherent diffractive imaging

21 Sept 2026, 16:04
1m
SwissFEL

SwissFEL

Entrance

Speaker

Tom von Scheven (University of Rostock)

Description

Single-shot coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) enables the capture of a full diffraction image of a nanostructure using a single flash of XUV or X-ray light. The resulting scattering image encodes both the geometry and the optical properties of the target. So far, this method has mainly been employed for ultrafast structural characterization [1]. However, CDI can also be utilized to resolve ultrafast optical property changes caused by e.g. transient excitation from nonlinear scattering [2], or by illumination with a second ultra-short laser pulse.

Here, we explore the expected signatures for the latter case theoretically, where simultaneous exposure to a strong IR field can induce transient optical properties. To this end, the effective optical properties, emerging from the laser dressing, are extracted from the dipole response of a local quantum description based on an atom-like solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. In a second step, we apply the well-known Mie-solution, to use the obtained optical properties in order to describe the resulting scattering process at helium nanodroplets and compare the results to recent experiments [3].

[1] I. Barke et al., Nat. Commun. 6, 6187 (2015)

[2] B. Kruse et al., J. Phys.: Photonics 2, 024007 (2020)

[3] J. Schäfer-Zimmermann et al., Ultrafast Sci. 6, 0146 (2026)

Scientific Topics AMO Physics

Author

Tom von Scheven (University of Rostock)

Co-authors

Björn Kruse (University of Rostock) Thomas Fennel (University of Rostock)

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