Ultrafast X-ray absorption spectroscopy

Ultrafast time-resolved X-ray absorption spectroscopy is a nascent technique that permits the investigation of photoinduced processes on a large variety of systems, on time scales down to the cross-correlation time between the laser and the X-ray pulses. This review shows the high potential and the present state-of-the-art of research exploiting ultrafast XAS. The boundary conditions of the technique are shown. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that time-resolved XAS can routinely be implemented with reasonable data accumulation times on very dilute chemical and biological samples.