Attosecond electron hole dynamics in molecules

X-ray free electron lasers (FELs) are sources of intense coherent X-rays that have very recently broken the attosecond barrier and are now able to generate pulses shorter than 1 femtosecond. Within this PhD project, we will devise and simulate quantum mechanically the new ways to measure attosecond many-electron dynamics in atoms and molecules irradiated by X-ray FELs, focussing especially on the quantum evolution of electron holes. We are also predicting new ultrafast physical phenomena occurring in ionised atoms and molecules. This PhD project will involve theoretical modelling of attosecond spectroscopies of hole migration - a spectacular effect where electron hole created by an attosecond laser pulse moves across a polyatomic molecule. The work will be done in collaboration with the experimental team at Imperial (Marangos, Frasinski) and at the LCLS X-ray FEL facility at Stanford, where the highly competitive beamtime has been allocated to the hole migration experiments of our team in the beginning of 2021. During this PhD project, the student will be trained in many-body quantum mechanics, numerical methods, coding of numerical algorithms, high performance computing (parallel computing, optionally - dataflow computing).