Wen Li

projects
Ultrafast molecular dynamics, femtosecond and attosecond laser (ongoing)

Faculty Profile

Professor
au8070@wayne.edu

Department

Chemistry

Phone

313-577-8658

Fax

313-577-8822

Office

Chem 63

News mentions

Selected publications

  • L. Fan, S. K. Lee, P. Y. Chen and W. Li, “Observation of nanosecond hot carrier decay dynamics in graphene”, J. Phy. Chem. Lett., 2018, 9, 1485
  • A. H. Winney, G. Basnayake, D. A. Debrah, Y. F. Lin, S. K. Lee, P. Hoerner, Q. Liao, H. B. Schlegel and W. Li, “Disentangling strong field multi-electron dynamics with angular streaking”, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2018, 9, 2539 (Invited Perspective, Cover and ACS Editor’s Choice)
  • W. K. Peters, D. E. Couch, B. Mignolet, X. Shi, Q. L. Nguyen, R. C. Fortenberry, H. B. Schlegel, F. Remacle, H. C. Kapteyn, M. M. Murnane and W. Li, “Ultrafast 25 fs relaxation in highly excited states of methyl azide mediated by strong nonadiabatic coupling”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 2017, 114, E11072 
  • A. H. Winney, S. K. Lee, Y. F. Lin, P. Adhikari, H. B. Schlegel and W. Li, “Attosecond electron correlation dynamics in double ionization of benzene probed with two-electron angular streaking”, Phys. Rev. Lett., 2017, 119, 123201
  • T. N. Herath, Y. Lu, S. K. Lee and W. Li, "Strong field ionization depends on the sign of the magnetic quantum number", Phys. Rev. Lett. 2012, 109, 043004
  • S. K. Lee, Y. F. Lin, L. Yan, W. Li, "Laser-induced low-energy electron diffraction in aligned molecules", J. Phys. Chem. A, 2012, 116, 1950
  • W. Li, A. A. J-B, C. W. Hogle, V. Sharma, X. B. Zhou, H. C. Kapteyn and M. M. Murnane, "Visualizing electron rearrangement during the transition from a molecule to atoms", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A, 2010, 107, 20219
  • W. Li*, X.B. Zhou, S. Patchkovskii, R. Lock, A. Stolow, H. C. Kapteyn and M. M. Murnane, "Time-resolved dynamics in N2O4 probed with high harmonic generation", Science 2008, 322, 1207
  • I. Thomann, R. Lock, V. Sharma, E.Gagnon, S. Pratt, H.C. Kapteyn, M. M. Murnane and W. Li*, "Direct measurement of the angular dependence of the single-photon ionization of aligned N2 and CO2", J. Phys. Chem. A. 2008, 112, 9382
  • W. Li, R. R. Lucchese, A. Doyuran, Z. Wu, H. Loos, G. E. Hall, A. G. Suits, "Superexcited state dynamics probed with an Extreme-Ultraviolet Free Electron Laser," Phys. Rev. Lett. 2004, 92, 83002

Research Description

Professor Wen Li's research interests lie in developing and applying novel probes to study reaction dynamics at their most detailed level. The goal of our research is to understand, predict and eventually control a chemical reaction in the most effective way. The probes include strong field ionization and ultrashort electron and photon pulses produced from high order harmonic generation (HHG). HHG itself is also a strong field process that can be described semi-classically using a 3-step model: 1. ionization of a bound electron from an atom by a strong laser field; 2. propagation and acceleration of the electron in the laser field; 3. recombination of the electron with the ion core to emit high energy photons. Both the 'recombining' electron and the emitted photon can be used to probe chemical dynamics. Due to the intrinsic ultrafast property of HHG, the pulse duration of the photon and electron can be as short as a few tens of attoseconds (10-18s). These fast pulses enable us for the first time to directly probe the attosecond dynamics of the electrons, which play a dominant role in reactions relevant to physics, chemistry and biology.

Affiliated Departments