Fig. 3: Photoinduced ultrafast dynamics visualized in real space.

a, The background density map corresponds to the conventional ΔPDF derived from measured ΔsM, while the positions of the sparse pair distributions reconstructed through Δs-PDF are marked as scatter points overlaid on the ΔPDF. The error bars are estimated via bootstrap resampling and represent one standard deviation. The closest (R1), second nearest-neighbor (R2), and diagonal (R3) C-C interatomic distances for the steady-state structure are given at the bottom. The wave packet bifurcates at approximately 100 fs and the subsequent evolution in the ring-opening and ring-closing pathways are indicated by the arrows. The center of the enhanced bands for HT is determined with super-resolution analysis. b, c Simulated ΔPDF of ring-closing and ring-opening trajectories, respectively. The simulated results are convolved with a Gaussian function with 80-fs FWHM. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.