Markus Koch, head of the research group Femtosecond Dynamics at the Institute of Experimental Physics at TU Graz, and his team develop new methods for time-resolved femtosecond laser spectroscopy to investigate ultrafast processes in molecular systems. In 2018 the group demonstrated for the first time that photo-induced processes can be observed inside a helium nanodroplet, a nanometer-sized droplet of superfluid helium that serves as a quantum solvent. For their investigations, the researchers placed a single indium atom inside the droplet and analysed the reaction of the system with the pump-probe principle. The atom was excited with an ultrashort laser pulse, triggering the rearrangement of the helium environment within femtoseconds (10-15 seconds). A time-delayed second laser pulse probed this development and provided information on the behavior of the system.
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Source: Phys.org