TY  - EJOUR
AU  - Kern, Christian S.
AU  - Yang, Xiaosheng
AU  - Zamborlini, Giovanni
AU  - Mearini, Simone
AU  - Jugovac, Matteo
AU  - Feyer, Vitaliy
AU  - De Giovannini, Umberto
AU  - Rubio, Angel
AU  - Soubatch, Serguei
AU  - Ramsey, Michael G.
AU  - Tautz, F. Stefan
AU  - Puschnig, Peter
TI  - Circular dichroism in the photoelectron angular distribution of achiral molecules
PB  - arXiv
M1  - FZJ-2025-03158
PY  - 2025
AB  - Circular dichroism in the angular distribution (CDAD) is the effect that the angular intensity distribution of photoemitted electrons depends on the handedness of the incident circularly polarized light. A CDAD may arise from intrinsic material properties like chirality, spin-orbit interaction, or quantum-geometrical effects on the electronic structure. In addition, CDAD has also been reported for achiral organic molecules at the interface to metallic substrates. For this latter case, we investigate two prototypical $π$-conjugated molecules, namely tetracene and pentacene, whose frontier orbitals have a similar shape but exhibit distinctly different symmetries. By comparing experimental CDAD momentum maps with simulations within time-dependent density functional theory, we show how the final state of the photoelectron must be regarded as the source of the CDAD in such otherwise achiral systems. We gain additional insight into the mechanism by employing a simple scattering model for the final state, which allows us to decompose the CDAD signal into partial wave contributions.
KW  - Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) (Other)
KW  - FOS: Physical sciences (Other)
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)25
DO  - DOI:10.48550/ARXIV.2507.12113
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1044387
ER  -