Charge migration in Phenylalanine initiated by attosecond pulses

The investigation of ultrafast electron dynamics in complex molecules is of crucial importance in the understanding of many biological phenomena, such as cellular respiration, catalysis and photosynthesis. In particular, the application of attosecond pulses to large molecules offers the possibility to initiate and observe ultrafast charge migration along molecular skeleton, that is expected to occur on a temporal scale between hundreds of attoseconds up to few femtoseconds, preceding any nuclear rearrangement [1].