Tracing vibrational wave packets in excited electronic states of H2 with xuv-pump/xuv-probe schemes

Vibrational wave packets in the excited electronic states of H2 created by a single UV pulse are probed by a time-delayed second pulse of the same characteristics. The motion of the vibrational wave packet is traced by analyzing the signature of the 2pσu dissociative ionization channel in the proton kinetic energy distributions at different time delays between the pulses. Moreover, since the pump and probe pulses have the same characteristics, replicas of the vibrational wave packet are created at different times leading to interference patterns in the vibrational distributions of the excited states that are probed in the ionization channels.