Ab Initio Adiabatic Dynamics Combined with Wigner Distribution Approach to Femtosecond Pump−Probe Negative Ion to Neutral to Positive Ion (NeNePo) Spectroscopy of Ag2Au, Ag4, and Au4 Clusters

Abstract

Ultrafast ground state nuclear dynamics of small coinage metal clusters is theoretically explored in the framework of negative ion to neutral to positive ion (NeNePo) femtosecond pump−probe spectroscopy with the aim to determine the scope and perspective of this technique. This approach involves the preparation of an initial ensemble in the anionic ground state of the cluster, one-photon detachment by the pump pulse, the propagation of the system on the neutral electronic ground state, and detection via the cationic ground state by a time-delayed ionizing probe pulse. The calculations of the NeNePo-ZEKE signals under the condition of zero kinetic energy electrons are based on the combination of the Wigner distribution approach and ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) “on the fly” in the framework of gradient-corrected DFT for the propagation of an ensemble of classical trajectories and involves the average over the entire phase space. We have chosen examples of Ag2Au and Au4 to investigate time scales and th...