Single photon-induced symmetry breaking of H2 dissociation.
H2, the smallest and most abundant molecule in the universe, has a perfectly symmetric ground state. What does it take to break this symmetry? We found that the inversion symmetry can be broken by absorption of a linearly polarized photon, which itself has inversion symmetry. In particular, the emission of a photoelectron with subsequent dissociation of the remaining H+2 fragment shows no symmetry with respect to the ionic H+ and neutral H atomic fragments. This lack of symmetry results from the entanglement between symmetric and antisymmetric H+2 states that is caused by autoionization. The mechanisms behind this symmetry breaking are general for all molecules.
Martín
F
F
Departamento de Química, C-9, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain.
Fernández
J
J
Havermeier
T
T
Foucar
L
L
Weber
Th
T
Kreidi
K
K
Schöffler
M
M
Schmidt
L
L
Jahnke
T
T
Jagutzki
O
O
Czasch
A
A
Benis
E P
EP
Osipov
T
T
Landers
A L
AL
Belkacem
A
A
Prior
M H
MH
Schmidt-Böcking
H
H
Cocke
C L
CL
Dörner
R
R