On December 18th, 2023, Prof. Xueguang Ren from the School of Physics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, was invited to deliver a lecture at the 202th Wuhan National Forum by Prof. Min Li from Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics (WNLO).
Prof. Pengfei Lan chaired the forum, and the deputy director of WNLO, Prof. Jian Wang awarded the forum medal to Prof. Xueguang Ren, and then the lecture officially began.
Prof. Xueguang Ren's lecture was titled Ultrafast dynamics of atoms, molecules and clusters upon inner-valence ionization. He introduced the role of intramolecular Coulomb decay (ICD) research in areas such as medicine and control of biochemical reactions, starting with the disruption of weak intermolecular interactions in cells caused by radiation. The principle of ICD was introduced in a step-by-step manner. The principles and development process of the electron collision reaction spectrometer used to study the ICD process in experiments were subsequently introduced. Prof. Xueguang Ren concluded by presenting the current progress of related experiments, including the study of absolute scattering cross-section, the ICD process of benzene dimer and trimer, and the proton transfer process using hydrated pyrrole as an example. By studying the ICD process in clusters with different weak intermolecular interactions, including van der Waals forces, hydrogen bonds, and π stacking, he revealed the physical mechanisms involved.
The presentation evoked a lively interaction among the attendees, with researchers and scholars actively engaging in thoughtful exchanges about the in-depth details of ICD process and proton transfer.
Xueguang Ren is currently a Professor at the School of Physics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, and is also a recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. He graduated from Xi’an Jiaotong University with a bachelor's degree in July 2000, and received a doctorate from Tsinghua University in July 2005. From September 2005 to February 2016, Dr. Ren worked successively at the University Paris-Sud XI, France, Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Germany, and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Germany, as a postdoctoral researcher, researcher, and principal investigator (PI), respectively. He is currently a member of the Atomic and Molecular Physics Committee of the Chinese Physical Society. Dr. Ren’s main research areas are electron-impact ionization experiments, studying the structure and dynamic phenomena of atomic molecules and clusters with the development of multi particle coincidence imaging methods. He has published over 120 academic papers in journals such as Nature Chemistry, Nature Physics, Nature Communication, and PRL, and has won the National Outstanding Dissertation Award of China, etc.
