Tuesday, September 25, 2012

1209.5168 (Brian Abbey et al.)

Femtosecond X-ray Laser induced transient electronic phase change
observed in fullerene C60
   [PDF]

Brian Abbey, Ruben A. Dilanian, Connie Darmanin, Rebecca A. Ryan, Corey T. Putkunz, Andrew V. Martin, Victor Streltsov, Michael W. M. Jones, Naylyn Gaffney, Felix Hofmann, Garth J. Williams, Sebastian Boutet, Marc Messerschmidt, M. Marvin Siebert, Sophie Williams, Evan Curwood, Eugeniu Balaur, Andrew G. Peele, Keith A. Nugent, Harry M. Quiney
X-ray Free-Electron Lasers (XFELs) deliver X-ray pulses with a coherent flux that is approximately eight orders of magnitude greater than that available from a modern third generation synchrotron source. The power density in an XFEL pulse may be so high that it can modify the electronic properties of a sample on a femtosecond timescale. Exploration of the interaction of intense coherent X-ray pulses and matter is of both intrinsic scientific interest, and of critical importance to the interpretation of experiments that probe the structures of materials using high-brightness femtosecond XFEL pulses. In this letter, we report observations of the diffraction of an extremely intense 32 fs nanofocused X-ray pulses by a powder sample of crystalline C60. We find that the diffraction pattern at the highest available incident power exhibits significant structural signatures that are absent in data obtained at both third-generation synchrotron sources or from XFEL sources operating at low output power. These signatures are consistent with a highly ordered structure that does not correspond with any previously known phase of crystalline C60. We argue that these data indicate the formation of a transient phase that is formed by a dynamic electronic distortion induced by inner-shell ionisation of at least one carbon atom in each C60 molecule.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.5168

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