Jahn-Teller distortion and dissociation of CCl by transient X-ray spectroscopy simultaneously at the carbon K- and chlorine L-edge.

X-ray Transient Absorption Spectroscopy (XTAS) and theoretical calculations are used to study CCl prepared by 800 nm strong-field ionization. XTAS simultaneously probes atoms at the carbon K-edge (280-300 eV) and chlorine L-edge (195-220 eV). Comparison of experiment to X-ray spectra computed by orbital-optimized density functional theory (OO-DFT) indicates that after ionization, CCl undergoes symmetry breaking driven by Jahn-Teller distortion away from the initial tetrahedral structure (T) in 6 ± 2 fs.