X-ray diffraction experiments on ultrafast photo-chemical reactions in solid state and solution with regard to biological applications

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The temporal resolution of optical spectroscopy has been extended recently to the range of a few femtoseconds where the limits of the chemical and biological reaction speed is reached. Unfortunately the present spectroscopic methods do not allow the direct access to fast structural changes. Since structural information is of fundamental importance for the understanding of biological and chemical reactions time-resolved structural methods with temporal resolution in the sub-picosecond range is required. In this project we plan to investigate ultrafast structural changes related to photochemical reactions and on the long term to extend these experiments towards the study of the dynamics of biopolymers such as proteins and peptides. At the beginning we plan to build a sub-picosecond x-ray source based on plasma generation via strong femtosecond light pulses, to optimize this source to allow test diffraction experiments and subsequently to study ultrafast photo-isomerization and photo-dissociation processes in molecular crystals or guest-host systems.