Photoemission Chronoscopy of the Iodoalkanes

Abstract

Time delays in photoemission are on the order of attoseconds and have been experimentally determined in atoms, molecules and solids. Their magnitude and energy dependence are expected to yield fundamental insights into the properties of the systems in which they're measured. In a recent study Biswas \textsl{et al.} (Biswas, S., F\"org, B., Ortmann, L. et al. Probing molecular environment through photoemission delays. Nat. Phys. 16, 778-783 (2020)) determined the absolute photoemission time of the I$4d$ level in iodoethane via attosecond streaking spectroscopy, finding the presence of a functional group to increase the photoemission time delay, suggesting a correlation between the size of the functional group and time delay based on a semi-classical calculation. Here we experimentally study the dependence of the I$4d$ photoemission time on the functional group in the iodoalkanes from iodomethane up to 2-iodobutane at three photon energies across the giant resonance in the I$4d\to\varepsilon f$ photoemission channel, finding that the presence alone of a functional group does not necessarily increase the photoemission delay, and that overall no clear correlation between its size and the photoemission time delay can be established.