A team led by Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, in collaboration with researchers from CNR-IOM, has developed an experiment capable of observing in real time the interactions between electronic excitations and lattice vibrations in graphite.
Published in Nature Communications, the study employed femtosecond time-resolved resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (tr-RIXS) at the MagneDyn beamline of the FERMI free-electron laser. Ultrafast optical and X-ray pulses allowed the researchers to track how energy is redistributed from excited electrons to lattice phonons immediately after excitation.
The work also revealed a crossover between different dynamical regimes depending on the detuning of the X-ray energy, demonstrating a new level of control in studying electron–phonon interactions.
These findings open new opportunities to understand fundamental processes that govern the physical properties of materials and their applications in advanced electronics, photonics, and quantum materials.
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