Review is based on critical analysis of the paper "Tomographic imaging of molecular orbitals" by J. Itatani et al.

Introduction

The paper "Tomographic imaging of molecular orbitals" by J. Itatani et al. published in 2004 in Nature is the initial work in the field of tomographic reconstruction of molecular orbitals. The authors proposed a technique to image a single orbital by probing molecules aligned in different directions with a femtosecond laser pulse. The paper describes an experimental application of the proposed tomography to the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of the N₂ molecule and compares it with an ab initio orbital. Using a simple theoretical model the authors demonstrate that with an attosecond laser one can observe how orbitals change during chemical reactions - that is to observe the very foundations of chemistry.

The paper has significant scientific importance because it started a new field of research - tomographic imaging. The work has brought a lot of attention from both theoreticians and experimentalists and presently (Fall 2007) has been cited 147 times. However the paper presents an oversimplified interpretation of the results and has some shortcomings in the theoretical part.

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