Imaging electronic quantum motion with light

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that X-ray time-resolved imaging of electronic wavepackets reveals quantum correlations and the quantum nature of light, challenging the traditional focus on instantaneous electronic density in dynamic systems.

Contribution

It uncovers how scattering patterns encode quantum correlations and highlights the importance of quantum light effects in time-resolved electronic imaging.

Findings

Scattering patterns encode spatial and temporal electronic correlations.

Quantum nature of light significantly influences imaging of non-stationary states.

Patterns visually manifest quantum properties of light.

Abstract

Imaging the quantum motion of electrons not only in real-time, but also in real-space is essential to understand for example bond breaking and formation in molecules, and charge migration in peptides and biological systems. Time-resolved imaging interrogates the unfolding electronic motion in such systems. We find that scattering patterns, obtained by X-ray time-resolved imaging from an electronic wavepacket, encode spatial and temporal correlations that deviate substantially from the common notion of the instantaneous electronic density as the key quantity being probed. Surprisingly, the patterns provide an unusually visual manifestation of the quantum nature of light. This quantum nature becomes central only for non-stationary electronic states and has profound consequences for time-resolved imaging.