Abstract
The primary electron attachment process in electron driven chemistry represents one of the most fundamental chemical transformations with wide-ranging importance in science and technology. However, the mechanistic detail of the seemingly simple reaction of an electron and a neutral to form an anion remains poorly understood, particularly at very low electron energies. Here, time-resolved photoelectron imaging was used to probe the electron attachment process to a non-polar molecule using time-resolved methods. An initially populated diffuse non-valence state of the anion that is bound by correlation forces evolves coherently in ~30 fs into a valence state of the anion. The extreme efficiency with which the correlation-bound state serves as a doorway state for low-energy electron attachment explains a number of electron driven processes such as anion formation in the interstellar medium and electron attachment to fullerenes.
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