Quantum state tomography of molecules by ultrafast diffraction

Ming Zhang, Shuqiao Zhang, Yanwei Xiong, Hankai Zhang, Anatoly A. Ischenko, Oriol Vendrell, Xiaolong Dong, Xiangxu Mu, Martin Centurion, Haitan Xu (), R. J. Dwayne Miller () and Zheng Li ()
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Ming Zhang: Peking University
Shuqiao Zhang: Peking University
Yanwei Xiong: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Hankai Zhang: Peking University
Anatoly A. Ischenko: RTU-MIREA - Russian Technological University
Oriol Vendrell: Universität Heidelberg
Xiaolong Dong: Peking University
Xiangxu Mu: Peking University
Martin Centurion: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Haitan Xu: Southern University of Science and Technology
R. J. Dwayne Miller: University of Toronto
Zheng Li: Peking University

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Ultrafast electron diffraction and time-resolved serial crystallography are the basis of the ongoing revolution in capturing at the atomic level of detail the structural dynamics of molecules. However, most experiments capture only the probability density of the nuclear wavepackets to determine the time-dependent molecular structures, while the full quantum state has not been accessed. Here, we introduce a framework for the preparation and ultrafast coherent diffraction from rotational wave packets of molecules, and we establish a new variant of quantum state tomography for ultrafast electron diffraction to characterize the molecular quantum states. The ability to reconstruct the density matrix, which encodes the amplitude and phase of the wavepacket, for molecules of arbitrary degrees of freedom, will enable the reconstruction of a quantum molecular movie from experimental x-ray or electron diffraction data.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25770-6

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