English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

Superatomic molecular orbitals (SAMO) in C60 are ideal building blocks forfunctional nanostructures. However, imaging them spatially in the gas phase hasbeen unsuccessful. It is found experimentally that if C60 is excited by an800-nm laser, the photoelectron casts an anisotropic velocity image, but theimage becomes isotropic if excited at a 400-nm wavelength. This diffuse imagedifference has been attributed to electron thermal ionization, but more recentexperiments (800 nm) reveal a clear non-diffuse image superimposed on thediffuse image, whose origin remains a mystery. Here we show that thenon-diffuse anisotropic image is the precursor of the $f$ SAMO. We predict thatfour 800-nm photons can directly access the $1f$ SAMO, and with one morephoton, can image the orbital, with the photoelectron angular distributionhaving two maxima at 0$^\circ$ and 180$^\circ$ and two humps separated by56.5$^\circ$. Since two 400-nm photons only resonantly excite the spherical$1s$ SAMO and four 800-nm photon excite the anisotropic $1f$ SAMO, our findinggives a natural explanation of the non-diffuse image difference, complementingthe thermal scenario.

Imaging superatomic molecular orbitals in a ${\bf C_{60}}$ molecule through four 800-nm photons