Femtosecond time-resolved soft X-ray spectroscopy (fs-SXS) offers unique insights into photo-physical and photo-chemical processes through its combination of element specificity and ultrafast time resolution. While sufficiently bright and short pulses of soft X-rays are available at a handful of free electron laser facilities worldwide, laser-based ‘tabletop sources’ have the potential to...
At the boundary between atomic physics and nuclear physics one can find exotic decay modes such as the case of 205-Tl. Being a stable nuclear species on earth, 205-Tl starts to beta decay, when it is fully ionized. This so-termed bound-state beta decay plays an indirect, yet crucial role in dating our solar system via the nuclear chronometer 205Pb. In order to make use of the long-lived decay...
The study of matter at high-energy-density (HED) conditions is relevant to the understanding of compact astrophysical objects, and crucial for applications such as inertial confinement fusion. For producing such extreme states of matter in the laboratory, volumetric heating by intense pulses of heavy ions offers a novel approach (compared to more established drivers such as high-energy...
Significant effort is being invested to find abundant, catalytically active and stable (photo)electrocatalysts, with transition metal oxides being an associated promising material class. The issues of efficiency and stability are due to related electronic-structure processes driving the oxygen evolution reaction and hydrogen evolution reaction at the solid-liquid interface between the...
