COSMOS Project

Exploring the Influence of Approximations for Simulating Valence Excited X‑ray Spectra

First-principles simulations of excited-state X-ray spectra are becoming increasingly important to interpret the wealth of electronic and geometric information contained within femtosecond X-ray absorption spectra recorded at X-ray Free Electron Lasers (X-FELs). However, because the transition dipole matrix elements must be calculated between two excited states (i.e., the valence excited state and the final core excited state arising from the initial valence excited state) of very different energies, this can be challenging and time-consuming to compute…

Prediction Through Quantum Dynamics Simulations: Photo-excited Cyclobutanone

Quantum dynamics simulations are becoming a standard tool for simulating photo-excited molecular systems involving a manifold of coupled states, known as non-adiabatic dynamics. While these simulations have had many successes in explaining experiments and giving details of non-adiabatic transitions, the question remains as to their predictive power…

Ultrafast electron diffraction of photoexcited gas-phase cyclobutanone predicted by ab initio multiple cloning simulations

We present the result of our calculations of ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) for cyclobutanone excited into the S2 electronic state, which is based on the non-adiabatic dynamics simulations with the Ab Initio Multiple Cloning (AIMC) method with the electronic structure calculated at the SA(3)-CASSCF(12,12)/aug-cc-pVDZ level of theory…

The Photochemistry of Rydberg-Excited Cyclobutanone: Photoinduced Processes and Ground State Dynamics

Owing to ring-strain, cyclic ketones exhibit complex excited-state dynamics with multiple competing photochemical channels active on the ultrafast timescale. While the excitedstate dynamics of cyclobutanone after π ∗ ← n excitation into the lowest-energy excited singlet state (S1) has been extensively studied, the dynamics following 3s ← n excitation into the higher-lying singlet Rydberg (S2) state are less well understood…