Lifetime of electronic coherence after sudden ionization of molecules
In plain words
An ultrashort laser pulse can knock out an electron and leave the remaining charge sloshing across the molecule within a few femtoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second). How long this sloshing survives once the atoms start to move is not known.
Precise statement
For a medium-size organic molecule (for example phenylalanine or a substituted benzene) ionized by an attosecond XUV pulse, compute and measure the decay time $\tau_{coh}$ of the hole-density coherence between the lowest cationic states as nuclear motion and nuclear wavepacket spread are included. The answer is $\tau_{coh}$ with its dependence on molecular size and the number of active vibrational modes.
What would settle it
Attosecond pump-probe measurements of hole migration compared with full-dimensional quantum electron-nuclear dynamics for the same molecule.