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Solid-phase photo-processes involving icy dust grains greatly affect the chemical evolution of the interstellar medium by leading to the formation of complex organic molecules and by inducing photodesorption. So far, the focus of laboratory studies has been mainly on the impact of energetic ultraviolet (UV) photons on ices, but direct vibrational excitation by infrared (IR) photons is expected to influence the morphology and content of interstellar ices as well. However, little is still known about the mechanisms through which this excess vibrational energy is dissipated, and its implications on the structure and ice photochemistry. In this work, we present a systematic investigation of the behavior of interstellar relevant CO and CH3OH ice analogues upon resonant excitation of vibrational modes using tunable infrared radiation, leading to both the quantification of infrared-induced photodesorption and insights in the impact of vibrational energy dissipation on ice morphology. We utilize an ultrahigh vacuum setup at cryogenic temperatures to grow pure CO and CH3OH ices, as well as mixtures of the two. We expose the ices to intense, near-monochromatic mid-infrared free-electron-laser radiation to selectively excite the species. The dissipation of vibrational energy is observed to be highly dependent on the excited mode and the chemical environment of the ice. All amorphous ices undergo some degree of restructuring towards a more organized configuration upon on-resonance irradiation. Moreover, IR-induced photodesorption is observed to occur for both pure CO and CH3OH ices, with interstellar photodesorption efficiencies of the order of 10 molecules cm-2 s-1 (i.e., comparable to or higher than UV-induced counterparts). Indirect photodesorption of CO upon vibrational excitation of CH3OH in ice mixtures is also observed to occur, particularly in environments rich in methanol., Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 19 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables

Amorphous solid water (ASW) is one of the most widely studied solid phase systems. A better understanding of the nature of inter- and intramolecular forces in ASW is, however, still required to correctly interpret the catalytic role of ASW in the formation and preservation of molecular species in environments such as the icy surfaces of Solar System objects, on interstellar icy dust grains and potentially even in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere. In this work, we have systematically exposed porous ASW (pASW) to mid-infrared radiation generated by a free-electron laser at the HFML-FELIX facility in the Netherlands to study the effect of vibrational energy injection into the surface and bulk modes of pASW. During multiple sequential irradiations on the same ice spot, we observed selective effects both at the surface and in the bulk of the ice. Although the density of states in pASW should allow for a fast vibrational relaxation through the H-bonded network, part of the injected energy is converted into structural ice changes as illustrated by the observation of spectral modifications when performing Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in reflection-absorption mode. Future studies will include the quantification of such effects by systematically investigating ice thickness, ice morphology, and ice composition., Comment: Published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A

Amorphous solid water (ASW) is abundantly present in the interstellar medium, where it forms a mantle on interstellar dust particles and it is the precursor for cometary ices. In space, ASW acts as substrate for interstellar surface chemistry leading to complex molecules and it is postulated to play a critical role in proton-transfer reactions. Although ASW is widely studied and is generally well characterized by different techniques, energetically-induced structural changes, such as ion, electron and photon irradiation, in these materials are less well understood. Selective pumping of specific infrared (IR) vibrational modes can aid in understanding the role of vibrations in restructuring of hydrogen bonding networks. Here we present the first experimental results on hydrogen bonding changes in ASW induced by the intense, nearly monochromatic mid-IR free-electron laser (FEL) radiation of the FELIX-2 beamline at the FELIX Laboratory at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The changes are monitored by reflection-absorption infrared spectroscopy. Upon resonant irradiation, a modification in IR absorption band profile of ASW is observed in agreement with a growing crystalline-like contribution and a decreasing amorphous contribution. This phenomenon saturates within a few minutes of FEL irradiation, modifying upwards of 94~\% of the irradiated ice. The effect is further analysed in terms of hydrogen bonding donors and acceptors and the experiments are complimented with Molecular Dynamics simulations to constrain the effect at the molecular level., Comment: Accepted for publication in J. Phys. Chem. C

We report on a common fragment ion formed during the electron-ionization-induced fragmentation of three different three-ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), fluorene (C$_{13}$H$_{10}$), 9,10-dihydrophenanthrene (C$_{14}$H$_{12}$), and 9,10-dihydroanthracene (C$_{14}$H$_{12}$). The infrared spectra of the mass-isolated product ions with $m/z=165$ were obtained in a Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometer whose cell was placed inside the optical cavity of an infrared free-electron laser, thus providing the high photon fluence required for efficient infrared multiple-photon dissociation. The infrared spectra of the $m/z=165$ species generated from the three different precursors were found to be similar, suggesting the formation of a single C$_{13}$H$_{9}^+$ isomer. Theoretical calculations using density functional theory (DFT) revealed the fragment's identity as the closed-shell fluorenyl cation. Decomposition pathways from each parent precursor to the fluorenyl ion are proposed on the basis of DFT calculations. The identification of a single fragmentation product from three different PAHs supports the notion of the existence of common decomposition pathways of PAHs in general and can aid in understanding the fragmentation chemistry of astronomical PAH species.

We demonstrate coherent control of donor wavefunctions in phosphorous-doped silicon. Our experiments take advantage of a free electron laser to stimulate and observe photon echoes from, and Rabi oscillations between the ground and first excited state of P donors in Si.

One of the great successes of quantum physics is the description of the long-lived Rydberg states of atoms and ions. The Bohr model is equally applicable to donor impurity atoms in semiconductor physics, where the conduction band corresponds to the vacuum, and the loosely bound electron orbiting a singly charged core has a hydrogen-like spectrum according to the usual Bohr-Sommerfeld formula, shifted to the far-infrared due to the small effective mass and high dielectric constant. Manipulation of Rydberg states in free atoms and ions by single and multi-photon processes has been tremendously productive since the development of pulsed visible laser spectroscopy. The analogous manipulations have not been conducted for donor impurities in silicon. Here we use the FELIX pulsed free electron laser to perform time-domain measurements of the Rydberg state dynamics in phosphorus- and arsenic-doped silicon and we have obtained lifetimes consistent with frequency domain linewidths for isotopically purified silicon. This implies that the dominant decoherence mechanism for excited Rydberg states is lifetime broadening, just as for atoms in ion traps. The experiments are important because they represent the first step towards coherent control and manipulation of atomic-like quantum levels in the most common semiconductor and complement magnetic resonance experiments in the literature, which show extraordinarily long spin lattice relaxation times key to many well-known schemes for quantum computing qubits for the same impurities. Our results, taken together with the magnetic resonance data and progress in precise placement of single impurities, suggest that doped silicon, the basis for modern microelectronics, is also a model ion trap.