Collision optical

Many optical studies have employed a quasi-static cell, through which the photolytic precursor of one of the reagents and the stable molecular reagent are slowly flowed. The reaction is then initiated by laser photolysis of the precursor, and the products are detected a short time after the photolysis event. To avoid collisional relaxation of the internal degrees of freedom of the product, the products must be detected in a shorter time when compared to the time between gas-kinetic collisions, that depends inversely upon the total pressure in the cell. In some cases, for example in case of the stable NO product from the H + NO2 reaction discussed in section B2.3.3.2. the products are not removed by collisions with the walls and may have long residence times in the apparatus. Study of such reactions are better carried out with pulsed introduction of the reagents into the cell or under crossed-beam conditions. 

Neuhauser D and Baer M 1990 A new accurate (time independent) method for treating three-dimensional reactive collisions the application of optical potentials and projection operators J. Chem. Phys. 92 3419... 

Fig. 1. Pumping methods for lasers where is the pump light frequency and is the laser frequency, wavy lines represent radiationless transitions, and the dashed line collisions (a) optical pumping in three-level systems (b) optical pumping in four-level systems (c) pumping by electron impact and...

Natural linewidths are broadened by several mechanisms. Those effective in the gas phase include collisional and Doppler broadening. Collisional broadening results when an optically active system experiences perturbations by other species. Collisions effectively reduce the natural lifetime, so the broadening depends on a characteristic impact time, that is typically 1 ps at atmospheric pressure ... 

Although long-time Debye relaxation proceeds exponentially, short-time deviations are detectable which represent inertial effects (free rotation between collisions) as well as interparticle interaction during collisions. In Debye s limit the spectra have already collapsed and their Lorentzian centre has a width proportional to the rotational diffusion coefficient. In fact this result is model-independent. Only shape analysis of the far wings can discriminate between different models of molecular reorientation and explain the high-frequency pecularities of IR and FIR spectra (like Poley absorption). In the conclusion of Chapter 2 we attract the readers attention to the solution of the inverse problem which is the extraction of the angular momentum correlation function from optical spectra of liquids. 

Fig. 4.1. The La line of the H atom and its structure in the constant electric field (a) and the rotational structure of the vibrational transition (b). Wavy arrows show collision-induced transitions, thick horizontal arrows indicate the optical transitions that mutually interfere.

An important point is that these advances have been complemented by the concomitant development of innovative pulse-characterisation procedures such that all the features of femtosecond optical pulses - their energy, shape, duration and phase - can be subject to quantitative in situ scrutiny during the course of experiments. Taken together, these resources enable femtosecond lasers to be applied to a whole range of ultrafast processes, from the various stages of plasma formation and nuclear fusion, through molecular fragmentation and collision processes to the crucial, individual events of photosynthesis. 

In addition to measuring total recombination coefficients, experimentalists seek to determine absolute or relative yields of specific recombination products by emission spectroscopy, laser induced fluorescence, and optical absorption. In most such measurements, the products suffer many collisions between their creation and detection and nothing can be deduced about their initial translational energies. Limited, but important, information on the kinetic energies of the nascent products can be obtained by examination of the widths of emitted spectral lines and by... 

This limit is actually nonphysical for inelastic collisions, as an excitation to a state with energy n cannot occur with zero momentum transfer. Nonetheless, it is an important limit, which serves to check on experiments on inelastic collisions (Lassettre and Francis, 1964), and it shows clearly the similarity between optical transitions and collision with fast chaiged particles for which K is small. From (4.13) and (4.14), one can write... 

Finally, we would like to point out that in the off-resonance region, the response time of the nonlinearity is limited only by the optical pulse width r, as long as (Ea -Tiaj)/h >>2ir(x ). (8) This is no longer true when collisions (or phonons in solids) are present. For optical frequencies close enough to the absorption edge, the collision induced transitions to the excited state will cause the x s response time to be limited by the relaxation time of the excited states. (8)... 

Having recognized the close quantitative connection between optical properties and collision dynamics at this stage of development of atomic theory is a remarkable example of Bohr s physical intuition. 

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