New Insights into the Structure of Water with Ultrafast Probes

How water molecules interact with their neighbors--the of water--has long been a matter of intense experimental and theoretical interest. In their Perspective, Zubavicus and Grunze discuss results on water structure reported in the same issue by Wernet et al . and in a recent issue by Ruan et al . obtained with ultrafast time-resolved techniques. By heating a layer of ice with subpicosecond infrared pulses, and then using ultrafast electron diffraction, Ruan et al . were able to follow the melting and restructuring of the ice layer. Wernet et al . used x-ray absorption and Raman scattering to measure the instantaneous electronic structure of oxygen atoms in water. The new results should provide a rich source of data for computer simulations of water9s structure.