Ultrafast imaging of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a photoionized molecular system

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 4233 - 6
• Main Authors: Li, Min, Zhang, Ming, Vendrell, Oriol, Guo, Zhenning, Zhu, Qianru, Gao, Xiang, Cao, Lushuai, Guo, Keyu, Su, Qin-Qin, Cao, Wei, Luo, Siqiang, Yan, Jiaqing, Zhou, Yueming, Liu, Yunquan, Li, Zheng, Lu, Peixiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 09.07.2021; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 119/118; 639/766/36/1121; 639/766/94; Broken symmetry; Cations; Coupling (molecular); Humanities and Social Sciences; Imaging; Jahn-Teller effect; Methane; Molecular dynamics; Molecular structure; multidisciplinary; Photoionization; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Symmetry

The Jahn-Teller effect is an essential mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking in molecular and solid state systems, and has far-reaching consequences in many fields. Up to now, to directly image the onset of Jahn-Teller symmetry breaking remains unreached. Here we employ ultrafast ion-coincidenc...