Spectral analysis of water clusters of precisely defined sizes in the attosecond range

The dynamics of electrons in water play a fundamental role in a wide range of phenomena, but scientists face many theoretical and technical challenges when studying them simultaneously. In this published paper, the research team reports the results of a spectroscopic analysis of water clusters of precisely defined sizes over time scales of several attoseconds, to form a visualization of the electronic dynamics of water at the molecular level. The research team measures the effect of adding single molecules of water on the photo-ionization delay of water clusters. It was observed that this delay continued to increase with the addition of water molecules to the clusters until they contained four or five molecules. Only a slight change in this delay was observed with the tendency to form larger water clusters. The research team explained that this delay is commensurate with the widening of the space of the gap arising between the water’s electrons as a result of the structural chaos that arises in large water clusters, and large quantities of water in its liquid state. This gap increases initially with the increase in the size of the water cluster, and then settles somewhat in a specific position. These results point to a previously unknown property, which is that the photoionization delay is affected by the delocalization of the space between electrons, and indicate a direct correlation between the electronic structure and photoionization dynamics on time scales of several attoseconds. These research results provide a new perspective to study the mechanisms of space differential localization between water electrons, and the dynamics of this phenomenon on time scales of several attoseconds.