INRS research gets large audience

A study about filming moving molecular fragments is featured in the prestigious journal Physics Today.

Volatile molecular fragments do not only follow the beaten path but leave it and stroll around.

The research from the Advanced Laser Light Source (ALLS) laboratory of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), published in November 2020 in Science, caught the attention of Physics Today. This flagship journal of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) reaches a great pool of individual, academic, private and public laboratory subscribers.

“We are extremely happy to have such a large audience for our research!”
Heide Ibrahim, the ALLS scientist and research associate at the INRS who supervised the study.

A rewarded breakthrough

The quick study “A molecular road movie” in the July issue of Physics Today.

With this work, the team was the first to image in real-time the quantum chemical phenomenon termed “roaming”, which describes volatile molecular fragments that do not only follow the beaten path but leave it and stroll around. “Our molecular camera makes it possible to film the ’road trip’ of the fragments as it occurs, not just the arrival of fragments at their destination”, the researcher points out.

With the support of Professor François Légaré, the team was the first to capture these ’roamers’ in action. The journal Physics Today invited them to submit a quick study that has just been published in the July issue. The authors are Tomoyuki Endo, a former postdoctoral fellow at INRS, Chen Qu of the University of Maryland and Heide Ibrahim.

The molecular movie was shot at the ALLS laser facility of the Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre, located in Varennes.

INRS research gets large audience

A rewarded breakthrough

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