In high harmonic generation experiments harmonic emission occurs within a fraction of the period of the driving laser field. Current state of the art models of high harmonic generation use recombination matrix elements calculated within sophisticated, field-free, time-independent approaches. However these recombination matrix elements include recombination events at all timescales, such as long lived resonances.

In this talk I show how to extract temporal information about electron-molecule scattering embedded in the conventional time-independent recombination matrix elements. This allows us to filter out the scattering events relevant for high harmonic generation experiments. Our method allows us to take snapshots of recombination dynamics with different exposure times and thus get insight into the dynamics of formation, life, and decay of resonances in electron – molecule scattering. I consider an example of a shape resonance in the nitrogen molecule and discuss implications for high harmonic experiments.