Ultrafast Electron Diffraction: Dynamical Structures on Complex Energy Landscapes

Abstract

In this contribution, we report studies in ultrafast electron diffraction (UED), with the aim of exploring new directions. The main focus is on the determination of complex structures and their dynamics with spatial and temporal resolutions sufficient to give an atomic-scale picture for the evolution in chemical or biological change. We also provide the theoretical framework for UED, and compare the experimental findings of UED to those predicted by density functional and charge density calculations. Selected applications are given in order to highlight phenomena related to concepts such as bifurcation of trajectories in dynamics, far-from-equilibrium coherent structures, and conformational robustness in biological structures. For the former two cases, we consider chemical systems, and, for the latter, we examine proteins of 200 atoms (angiotensin I) or more.