Excitation density in time-resolved water window soft X-ray spectroscopies: Experimental constraints in the detection of excited states

Time-resolved X-ray spectroscopies have the potential of unveiling ultrafast processes with chemical sensitivity, but their widespread application is still withheld by technical and experimental constraints on two levels: the count rate and the amount of signal to be measured. In this paper, we will give a brief overview of the available pulsed X-ray sources focusing in particular on those delivering photons with energies inside the water window (280–550 eV), thus allowing to access the C1s, N1s and O1s core levels which are relevant for the characterization of thin organic films and small molecules adsorbed on surfaces. We will mainly discuss the photon fluxes delivered by such sources in relation to their repetition rates, and we will see how these factors affect time-resolved measurements. The main purpose of this work is to discuss the most crucial parameter to adjust in pump-probe spectroscopies: the excitation density, which corresponds to the fraction of photoexcited molecules/atoms. We show that such quantity may be increased up to roughly 25% in gas phase and other robust samples, however, due to a lower damage threshold, in organic films it is typically constrained to be in the order of 1–5%. Despite the initially limited population of excited states in the latter case, we show that the evolution of the system may lead to a collective response of the material, which entirely modifies the measured core level line shape, thus providing a clear signal that may nonetheless offer valuable insights into the dynamics of the studied process.