Welcome
The Workshop “From Ultrafast to Ultraslow Dynamics in Molecules and Clusters” will be held in the Weizmann Institute of Science Israel , from 23th to 25th January 2017. The Workshop is organized by the Local organizing committee and the team of the conference unit of the Weizmann Institute.
This workshop is jointly organised by EU program COST under the CM1204 Action (XLIC).
The workshop participation is open to everybody.
Scope and Program of the Workshop
Dynamical processes in molecular and cluster systems play an important role in different disciplines of research including atmospheric and interstellar chemistry, biology, nano-science and more. It is appealing to classify different types of dynamics according to their time scale – from attosecond electronic dynamics, femtosecond and picosecond ro-vibrational motion up to typical nanosecond times of spontaneous radiative processes. However, even in small clusters and biomolecules, coupling of many degree's of freedom can lead to ultra-slow dynamics extending up to millisecond times.
In recent years, experimental techniques for studying these different dynamics have considerably advanced – from the development of ultrafast light sources, including high-order harmonic generation and free electron laser X-ray facilities, as well as highly controlled ion traps and ion storage rings that allow following a slow evolving time evolution of isolated molecular and cluster ions. On the theoretical side, quantum mechanical calculations provide insight regarding short time scales, while statistical models can describe long time dynamics on the ensemble level.
These communities have developed in parallel and often with little interaction with each-other. The goal of this workshop will be to bridge the gap between the different communities towards a full understanding of molecular and cluster dynamics. For example, it will be valuable to understand the role of initial ultrafast electronic and vibrational rearrangement of an isolated system on its slow decay by statistical fragmentation. Does ultrafast dynamics leading to internal conversion influence delayed recurrent fluorescence events? What is the importance of the coherent vibrational motion for long term processes and spectroscopic probes of isolated interstellar environments or biomolecular systems?
We aim at achieving this goal by bringing together leading experts from the different fields: including atto-second science, femto-chemistry, action spectroscopy, ion storage devices, time-dependent quantum mechanics and statistical physics – in order to promote a common language and shared goals. In particular, participants will be asked to highlight the scientific goals and challenges of each field to promote collaborative efforts. We hope that this conference will generate long term collaborations that will advance our understanding of molecular and cluster science across the different time scales.