The Green group wants to advance our understanding of photochemistry - chemistry initiated by the absorption of light. When a molecule absorbs light in the visible or ultraviolet, a molecule is typically driven to an excited electronic state. Following this excitation, the molecule can exhibit rich and varied chemistry, as is important in the atmosphere, in biology, in chemical synthesis, and even in space. Understanding how a molecule will behave following photoexcitation is extremely challenging however, with the relevant dynamics being governed by quantum mechanics and evolving over extremely short time (~femtoseconds, 10-15 s) and length scales (~angstroms, 10-10 m).
The Green group develops and applies state-of-the-art experimental techniques to image these ultrafast dynamics occurring in isolated gas-phase molecules.