CUSPFEL Chemistry with Ultrashorts Pulses and Free-Electron Lasers: looking for control strategies through *exact* computations

Prof. Fernando Martín

Funding : European Science Foundation. CMST COST Action CM0702

Duration: 2008 - 2012

48 months

The advent of xuv and x-ray ultrashort pulses produced by free-electron lasers and high harmonic generation has opened up the way to a new chemistry at the femto and attosecond time scales. Processes such as ionization and dissociation can now be monitored in real time, which can be used to develop novel control strategies of chemical reactions. For atoms and simple molecules, the implementation of nearly exact theoretical methods in supercomputers has made it possible to guide experimental research in this area. Such methods lie outside the traditional quantum chemistry realm since, e.g., they must accurately reproduce the time evolution of the electronic and nuclear motion, including both excited and continuum states. The necessary extension to complex systems, like many-electron atoms, molecules and nanoparticles, has required the joint efforts of the leading European groups included in this Action.