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Ultrafast Intense-Field Photoionization And Photofragmentation Of Systematic Series Of Substituted Organic Molecules, Timothy D. Scarborough

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The abundance and relevance of organic molecules similar to benzene makes their study important. Studying the interactions of such molecules with intense light fields has implications for the generation of short-wavelength radiation, attosecond science, high-harmonic generation, and many other fields. However, the computing power necessary to complete fully ab initio calculations describing molecules of this size does not exist; this leaves theoretical studies to rely on assumptions and approximations just to calculate the energies of the ground state. Including any sort of dynamics in these calculations is prohibitively complicated, and this makes experimental observations important. Since many organic molecules are …