Resolving in time the dynamics of light absorption by atoms and molecules, and the electronic rearrangement this induces, is among the most challenging goals of attosecond spectroscopy. The attoclock is an elegant approach to this problem, which encodes ionization times in the strongfield regime. However, the accurate reconstruction of these times from experimental data presents a formidable theoretical challenge. Here, we solve this problem by combining analytical theory with ab-initio numerical simulations. We apply our theory to numerical attoclock experiments on the hydrogen atom to extract ionization time delays and analyse their nature. Strong field ionization is often viewed as optical tunnelling through the barrier created by the field and the core potential. We show that, in the hydrogen atom, optical tunnelling is instantaneous. By calibrating the attoclock using the hydrogen atom, our method opens the way to identify possible delays associated with multielectron dynamics during strong-field ionization.

We present the hybrid anti-symmetrized coupled channels method for the calculation of fully differential photo-electron spectra of multi-electron atoms and small molecules interacting with strong laser fields. The method unites quantum chemical few-body electronic structure with strongfield dynamics by solving the time dependent Schrödinger equation in a fully anti-symmetrized basis composed of multi-electron states from quantum chemistry and a one-electron numerical basis. Photoelectron spectra are obtained via the time dependent surface flux (tSURFF) method. Performance and accuracy of the approach are demonstrated for spectra from the helium and beryllium atoms and the hydrogen molecule in linearly polarized laser fields at wavelengths from 21 to 400 nm. At long wavelengths, helium and the hydrogen molecule at equilibrium inter-nuclear distance can be approximated as single channel systems whereas beryllium needs a multi-channel description.wavelengths has remained out of computational reach. The particular difficultly arises from the fact that, in order to compute photoelectron spectra the asymptotic part of the wavefunction is required. This needs large simulation box volumes and access to exact single continuum states to project the wavefunction onto at the end of time propagation. Having large simulation boxes and computing single continuum states of a multi-electron system are expensive tasks, making these kind of computations costly or outright impossible.In this respect, a recently developed method called the time dependent surface flux (tSURFF) method [19,20] has turned out to be an attractive solution. In the tSURFF approach, the wavefunction outside a certain simulation box is absorbed, and the electron flux through the box surface is used to obtain photoelectron spectra. This way photoelectron spectra can be computed with minimal box sizes.We deal with the difficulties of the few body problem and computation of photoelectron spectra by combining quantum chemical structure with tSURFF for single electron systems through a coupled channels approach. The ansatz is similar in spirit to the one presented in [4]. However, unlike in [4], we deal with antisymmetrization exactly. We discretize our multi-electron wavefunctions with the neutral ground state of the system and with anti-symmetrized products of the system's single ionic states and a numerical one-electron basis. This ansatz is suitable to study single ionization problems. The ionic and neutral states are computed by the COLUMBUS code [21] giving us the flexibility to treat the ionic states at various levels of quantum chemistry. While the fully flexible active electron basis describes the ionizing electron, the ionic basis describes the core polarization and the exact anti-symmetrization ensures indistinguishability of the electrons. The inclusion of the field-free neutral helps us to get the right ionization potential and start with the correct initial state correlation without much effort. We call our method hybrid fully anti-symmetrized couple...

Directed cell migration toward spatio-temporally varying chemotactic stimuli requires rapid cytoskeletal reorganization. Numerous studies provide evidence that actin reorganization is controlled by intracellular redistribution of signaling molecules, such as the PI4,5P2/PI3,4,5P3 gradient. However, exploring underlying mechanisms is difficult and requires careful spatio-temporal control of external chemotactic stimuli. We designed a microfluidic setup to generate alternating chemotactic gradient fields for simultaneous multicell exposure, greatly facilitating statistical analysis. For a quantitative description of intracellular response dynamics, we apply alternating time sequences of spatially homogeneous concentration gradients across 300 μm, reorienting on timescales down to a few seconds. Dictyostelium discoideum amoebae respond to gradient switching rates below 0.02 Hz by readapting their migration direction. For faster switching, cellular repolarization ceases and is completely stalled at 0.1 Hz. In this "chemotactically trapped" cell state, external stimuli alternate faster than intracellular feedback is capable to respond by onset of directed migration. To investigate intracellular actin cortex rearrangement during gradient switching, we correlate migratory cell response with actin repolymerization dynamics, quantified by a fluorescence distribution moment of the GFP fusion protein LimEΔcc. We find two fundamentally different cell polarization types and we could reveal the role of PI3-Kinase for cellular repolarization. In the early aggregation phase, PI3-Kinase enhances the capability of D. discoideum cells to readjust their polarity in response to spatially alternating gradient fields, whereas in aggregation competent cells the effect of PI3-Kinase perturbation becomes less relevant.eukaryotic chemotaxis | pseudopod-based motility | gradient sensing | flow chamber

Transitions to absorbing states are of fundamental importance in nonequilibrium physics as well as ecology. In ecology, absorbing states correspond to the extinction of species. We here study the spatial population dynamics of three cyclically interacting species. The interaction scheme comprises both direct competition between species as in the cyclic Lotka-Volterra model, and separated selection and reproduction processes as in the May-Leonard model. We show that the dynamic processes leading to the transient maintenance of biodiversity are closely linked to attractors of the nonlinear dynamics for the overall species' concentrations. The characteristics of these global attractors change qualitatively at certain threshold values of the mobility and depend on the relative strength of the different types of competition between species. They give information about the scaling of extinction times with the system size and thereby the stability of biodiversity. We define an effective free energy as the negative logarithm of the probability to find the system in a specific global state before reaching one of the absorbing states. The global attractors then correspond to minima of this effective energy landscape and determine the most probable values for the species' global concentrations. As in equilibrium thermodynamics, qualitative changes in the effective free energy landscape indicate and characterize the underlying nonequilibrium phase transitions. We provide the complete phase diagrams for the population dynamics and give a comprehensive analysis of the spatio-temporal dynamics and routes to extinction in the respective phases.