We present an inversion method called pBasex aimed at reconstructing the original Newton sphere of expanding charged particles from its two-dimensional projection by fitting a set of basis functions with a known inverse Abel integral. The basis functions have been adapted to the polar symmetry of the photoionization process to optimize the energy and angular resolution while minimizing the CPU time and the response to the cartesian noise that could be given by the detection system. The method presented here only applies to systems with a unique axis of symmetry although it can be adapted to overcome this restriction. It has been tested on both simulated and experimental noisy images and compared to the Fourier-Hankel algorithm and the original Cartesian basis set used by [Dribinski et al.Rev. Sci. Instrum. 73, 2634 (2002)], and appears to give a better performance where odd Legendre polynomials are involved, while in the images where only even terms are present the method has been shown to be faster and simpler without compromising its accuracy.

Ribose is the central molecular subunit in RNA, but the prebiotic origin of ribose remains unknown. We observed the formation of substantial quantities of ribose and a diversity of structurally related sugar molecules such as arabinose, xylose, and lyxose in the room-temperature organic residues of photo-processed interstellar ice analogs initially composed of H2O, CH3OH, and NH3 Our results suggest that the generation of numerous sugar molecules, including the aldopentose ribose, may be possible from photochemical and thermal treatment of cosmic ices in the late stages of the solar nebula. Our detection of ribose provides plausible insights into the chemical processes that could lead to formation of biologically relevant molecules in suitable planetary environments.

DESIRS is a new undulator-based VUV beamline on the 2.75 GeV storage ring SOLEIL (France) optimized for gas-phase studies of molecular and electronic structures, reactivity and polarization-dependent photodynamics on model or actual systems encountered in the universe, atmosphere and biosphere. It is equipped with two dedicated endstations: a VUV Fourier-transform spectrometer (FTS) for ultra-high-resolution absorption spectroscopy (resolving power up to 10(6)) and an electron/ion imaging coincidence spectrometer. The photon characteristics necessary to fulfill its scientific mission are: high flux in the 5-40 eV range, high spectral purity, high resolution, and variable and well calibrated polarizations. The photon source is a 10 m-long pure electromagnetic variable-polarization undulator producing light from the very near UV up to 40 eV on the fundamental emission with tailored elliptical polarization allowing fully calibrated quasi-perfect horizontal, vertical and circular polarizations, as measured with an in situ VUV polarimeter with absolute polarization rates close to unity, to be obtained at the sample location. The optical design includes a beam waist allowing the implementation of a gas filter to suppress the undulator high harmonics. This harmonic-free radiation can be steered toward the FTS for absorption experiments, or go through a highly efficient pre-focusing optical system, based on a toroidal mirror and a reflective corrector plate similar to a Schmidt plate. The synchrotron radiation then enters a 6.65 m Eagle off-plane normal-incidence monochromator equipped with four gratings with different groove densities, from 200 to 4300 lines mm(-1), allowing the flux-to-resolution trade-off to be smoothly adjusted. The measured ultimate instrumental resolving powers are 124000 (174 µeV) around 21 eV and 250000 (54 µeV) around 13 eV, while the typical measured flux is in the 10(10)-10(11) photons s(-1) range in a 1/50000 bandwidth, and 10(12)-10(13) photons s(-1) in a 1/1000 bandwidth, which is very satisfactory although slightly below optical simulations. All of these features make DESIRS a state-of-the-art VUV beamline for spectroscopy and dichroism open to a broad scientific community.

An electron imaging technique has been used to study the full angular distribution of valence photoelectrons produced from enantiomerically pure molecular beams of camphor when these are photoionized with circularly polarized light. In addition to the familiar beta parameter, this provides a new chiral term, taking the form of an additional cosine function in the angular distribution which consequently displays a forward-backward electron ejection asymmetry. Several ionization channels have been studied using synchrotron radiation in the 8.85-26 eV photon energy range. With alternating left and right circularly polarized radiations the photoelectron circular dichroism (PECD) in the angular distribution can be measured and shows some strong dynamical variations with the photon energy, depending in sign and intensity on the ionized orbital. For all orbitals the measured PECD has a quite perfect antisymmetry when switching between R and S enantiomers, as expected from theory. In the HOMO(-1) channel the PECD chiral asymmetry curves show a double maxima reaching nearly 10% close to threshold, and peaking again at approximately 20% some 11 eV above threshold. This is attributed to a resonance that is also visible in the beta parameter curve. Newly optimized CMS-Xalpha photoionization dynamics calculations are also presented. They are in reasonably good agreement with the experimental data, including in the very challenging threshold regions. These calculations show that PECD in such randomly oriented samples can be understood in the electric dipole approximation and that, unlike the case pertaining in core-shell ionization-where a highly localized achiral initial orbital means that the dichroism arises purely as a final state scattering effect-in valence shell ionization there is a significant additional influence contributed by the initial orbital density.

manyChirality is ubiquitous in nature and fundamental in science, from particle physics to metamaterials. The most established technique of chiral discrimination -photoabsorption circular dichroism -relies on the magnetic properties of a chiral medium and yields an extremely weak chiral response. We propose and demonstrate a new, orders of magnitude more sensitive type of circular dichroism in neutral molecules: photoexitation circular dichroism. It does not rely on weak magnetic effects, but takes advantage of the coherent helical motion of bound electrons excited by ultrashort circularly polarized light. It results in an ultrafast chiral response and the efficient excitation of a macroscopic chiral density in an initially isotropic ensemble of randomly oriented chiral molecules. We probe this excitation without 1 arXiv:1612.08764v1 [physics.atm-clus] 27 Dec 2016 Here d 01 , d 02 and d 12 are the dipole transition vectors connecting the ground |0 and the two excited states |1 , |2 (Fig. 1b), ∆E 21 is the energy spacing between the excited states. For more than two states, Eq.(1) will contain the sum over all pairs of excited states n, m, leading to oscillations at all relevant frequencies ∆E nm . As a function of time the induced dipole vector maps out a helix (Fig. 3 1b) and the z-component of the helical current is j P XCD z ∝ σ[ d 01 × d 02 ] d 12 ∆E 21 cos(∆E 21 t). (2) Both d P XCD z and j P XCD z are quintessential chiral observables (see e.g. 19, 20 ). Indeed, both are proportional to the light helicity σ = ±1 and to the triple product of three vectors [ d 01 × d 02 ] d 12 . This product presents a fundamental measure of chirality: it changes sign upon reflection and thus has an opposite sign for left and right enantiomers. For randomly oriented non-chiral molecules d P XCD z = j P XCD z = 0. Eqs.(1,2) lead to the following conclusions. First, the coherent excitation of electronic states leads to a charge displacement in the light propagation direction. Hence, a macroscopic dipole d P XCD z and the corresponding chiral density are created in the excited states, with a chiral current oscillating out of phase for the two enantiomers. Second, PXCD requires no magnetic or quadrupole effects. Hence, it is orders of magnitude stronger than standard photoabsorption CD. While photoabsorption CD exploits the helical pitch of the laser field in space, PXCD takes advantage of the sub-cycle rotation of the light field in time and is inherently ultrafast. Indeed, PXCD arises only if the excitation dipoles d 01 , d 02 are non-collinear: for the angle φ between the two transition dipoles, the PXCD (Eqs. (1,2)) is proportional to σ sin(φ). Since σ = ±1, σ sin(φ) = sin(σφ) = sin(σωτ ), where ω is light frequency and τ = φ/ω is the required time for the light field to rotate by the angle φ. PXCD vanishes if the coherence between excited states |1 and |2 is lost and reflects dynamical symmetry breaking in an isotropic medium.The oscillations of the PXCD signal Eqs.(1,2) appear to suggest that probing it requires the