Ultrafast vibrations of NaK molecules studied by transient x-ray absorption spectroscopy

Time-resolved x-ray absorption spectroscopy is a widely used technique for monitoring ultrafast dynamics of molecules. Here we use this technique to analyze the quantum nuclear dynamics of NaK molecules in the first excited state. To quantitatively reconstruct the vibrational dynamics, we introduce a similarity function to determine the time-dependent position of the nuclear wavepacket from the time-resolved x-ray absorption spectroscopy. Here we demonstrate this new approach through numerical simulations.