Imaging structures at the molecular level is a developing interdisciplinary research field that spans the boundaries of physics and chemistry. High-spatial-resolution images of molecules can be obtained with photons or ultrafast electrons. In addition, images of valence molecular orbitals can be extracted via tomographic techniques based on the coherent extreme UV radiation emitted by a molecular gas exposed to an intense ultrashort infrared laser pulse. In this paper, we demonstrate that similar information can be obtained by inverting energy-resolved photoelectron spectra using a simplified analytical model.

• Received 8 July 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.94.023421