Attosecond probing and control of charge migration in carbon-chain molecule

In quantum mechanics, when an electron is quickly ripped off from a molecule, superposition of new eigenstates the cation creates wave packet that governs charge flow inside, which has been called migration (CM). Experimentally, extracting such dynamics at its natural (attosecond) timescale quite difficult. We report first experiment in linear carbon-chain butadiyne (C4H2), via high-harmonic spectroscopy (HHS). By employing advanced theoretical and computational tools, we showed CM single molecule are reconstructed harmonic spectra for each fixed-in-space angle molecule. For this one-dimensional calculate center ⟨ x ⟩ ( t ) to obtain vcm, quantify speed how it depends on orientation angle. The findings also uncover few tens hundreds attoseconds molecular structure. method can be extended other molecules where HHS technique employed.