Update Jan 2018 – a presentation covering this work was given at the PQE conference, video and slides are available online.
Update August 2017 – this article is now published in PRL, under the alternative title Molecular Frame Reconstruction Using Time-Domain Photoionization Interferometry.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 083401 (2017), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.083401
(Feb 2017) New manuscript on the arxiv:
Bootstrapping to the Molecular Frame with Time-domain Photoionization Interferometry
Photoionization of molecular species is, essentially, a multi-path interferometer with both experimentally controllable and intrinsic molecular characteristics. In this work, XUV photoionization of impulsively aligned molecular targets (N2) is used to provide a time-domain route to “complete” photoionization experiments, in which the rotational wavepacket controls the geometric part of the photoionization interferometer. The data obtained is sufficient to determine the magnitudes and phases of the ionization matrix elements for all observed channels, and to reconstruct molecular frame interferograms from lab frame measurements. In principle this methodology provides a time-domain route to complete photoionization experiments, and the molecular frame, which is generally applicable to any molecule (no prerequisites), for all energies and ionization channels.
Supplementary material (theory, data and code) available at DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.4480349.