We describe an experiment designed to probe the electronic damage induced in nanocrystals of Buckminsterfullerene (C60) by intense, femtosecond pulses of X-rays. The experiment found that, surprisingly, rather than being stochastic, the X-ray induced electron dynamics in C60 are highly correlated, extending over hundreds of unit cells within the crystals1.
Ryan, R. A., Williams, S., Martin, A. V., Dilanian, R. A., Darmanin, C., Putkunz, C. T., Wood, D., Streltsov, V. A., Jones, M. W., Gaffney, N., Hofmann, F., Williams, G. J., Boutet, S., Messerschmidt, M., Seibert, M. M., Curwood, E. K., Balaur, E., Peele, A. G., Nugent, K. A., Quiney, H. M., Abbey, B. Measurements of Long-range Electronic Correlations During Femtosecond Diffraction Experiments Performed on Nanocrystals of Buckminsterfullerene. J. Vis. Exp. (126), e56296, doi:10.3791/56296 (2017).