Potential Energy Surface Reconstruction and Lifetime Determination of Molecular Double-Core-Hole States in the Hard X-Ray Regime

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Sep 29;119(13):133001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.133001. Epub 2017 Sep 27.

Abstract

A combination of resonant inelastic x-ray scattering and resonant Auger spectroscopy provides complementary information on the dynamic response of resonantly excited molecules. This is exemplified for CH_{3}I, for which we reconstruct the potential energy surface of the dissociative I 3d^{-2} double-core-hole state and determine its lifetime. The proposed method holds a strong potential for monitoring the hard x-ray induced electron and nuclear dynamic response of core-excited molecules containing heavy elements, where ab initio calculations of potential energy surfaces and lifetimes remain challenging.