Fingerprints of Adiabatic versus Diabatic Vibronic Dynamics in the Asymmetry of Photoelectron Momentum Distributions

Abstract

When the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is valid, electrons adiabatically follow the nuclear motion in molecules. For strong nonadiabatic coupling between electronic states, one encounters a diabatic motion where the electrons remain local and do not adapt to molecular geometry changes. We show that the mentioned limiting cases are reflected differently in the asymmetry of time-resolved photoelectron momentum distributions. Whereas for adiabatic dynamics, the asymmetry directly maps the time-dependent average nuclear momentum, in the diabatic case, the asymmetry is determined by a nonclassical interference effect arising from the mixing of wave function components in different electronic states, which is present at times nonadiabatic transitions take place.