Femtochemistry And Femtobiology: Ultrafast Dynamics In Molecular Science

A collection of papers from a conference held in Toledo, Spain, in September 2001. The contributions are from international scientists and they examine the state-of-the-art of femtochemistry and femtobiology at the beginning of the new millennium. There are reviews and papers on ultrafast dynamics in molecular science. The coverage of topics highlights several important features of molecular science from the viewpoint of structure (space domain) and dynamics (time domain). First of all, the text presents developments, such as experimental techniques for understanding ultrafast processes in gas, condensed and complex systems, including biological molecules, surfaces and nanostructures. At the same time it stresses the different ways to control the rates and pathways of reactive events in chemistry and biology. Particular emphasis is given to biological processes as an area where femtodynamics is becoming very useful for resolving the structural dynamics from techniques such as electron diffraction, and X-ray and IR spectroscopy. Finally, developments in quantum control (in both theory and experiment) and the experimental pulse-shaping techniques are described.