Dynamic absorption spectroscopy

Pump-probe absorption experiments on the femtosecond time scale generally fall into two effective types, depending on the duration and spectral width of the pump pulse. If tlie pump spectrum is significantly narrower in width than the electronic absorption line shape, transient hole-burning spectroscopy [101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112 and 113] can be perfomied. The second type of experiment, dynamic absorption spectroscopy [57, 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121 and 122], can be perfomied if the pump and probe pulses are short compared to tlie period of the vibrational modes that are coupled to the electronic transition. 

Pollard W T, Dexhelmer S L, Wang Q, Peteanu L A, Shank C V and Mathles R A 1992 Theory of dynamic absorption spectroscopy of nonstatlonary states. 4. Application to 12 fs resonant Raman spectroscopy of bacterlorhodopsin J. Phys. Chem. 96 6147-58... 

WT Pollard, SL Dexheimer, Q Wang, LA Peteanu, CV Shank, RA Mathies. Theory of dynamic absorption-spectroscopy of nonstationary states. 4. Application to 12-fs resonant impulsive Raman-spectroscopy of bacteriorhodopsin. J Phys Chem 96 6147, 1992. 

Finally, reference is made to the dynamic dichroic absorption difference, which is related to an absorption change induced by an external time-dependent perturbation. Dynamic absorption spectroscopy is performed with linearly polarized IR light and serves for example to detect intermolecular hydrogen bonds in polyamides of the structure... 

Dynamic absorption spectroscopy has also been used to study the molecular origins of macroscopic rheological properties of organic polymers, and several relevant reports on this topic have been reviewed by Gregoriou et al. [77]. 

Wliat does one actually observe in the experunental spectrum, when the levels are characterized by the set of quantum numbers n. Mj ) for the nonnal modes The most obvious spectral observation is simply the set of energies of the levels another important observable quantity is the intensities. The latter depend very sensitively on the type of probe of the molecule used to obtain the spectmm for example, the intensities in absorption spectroscopy are in general far different from those in Raman spectroscopy. From now on we will focus on the energy levels of the spectmm, although the intensities most certainly carry much additional infonnation about the molecule, and are extremely interesting from the point of view of theoretical dynamics. 

Nesbitt D J 1994 Fligh-resolution, direct infrared-laser absorption-spectroscopy in slit supersonic ]ets—intermolecular forces and unimolecular vibrational dynamics in clusters Ann. Rev. Phys. Chem. 45 367-99... 

So far we have exclusively discussed time-resolved absorption spectroscopy with visible femtosecond pulses. It has become recently feasible to perfomi time-resolved spectroscopy with femtosecond IR pulses. Flochstrasser and co-workers [M, 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156 and 157] have worked out methods to employ IR pulses to monitor chemical reactions following electronic excitation by visible pump pulses these methods were applied in work on the light-initiated charge-transfer reactions that occur in the photosynthetic reaction centre [156. 157] and on the excited-state isomerization of tlie retinal pigment in bacteriorhodopsin [155]. Walker and co-workers [158] have recently used femtosecond IR spectroscopy to study vibrational dynamics associated with intramolecular charge transfer these studies are complementary to those perfomied by Barbara and co-workers [159. 160], in which ground-state RISRS wavepackets were monitored using a dynamic-absorption technique with visible pulses. 

A suitable method for a detailed investigation of stimulated emission and competing excited state absorption processes is the technique of transient absorption spectroscopy. Figure 10-2 shows a scheme of this technique. A strong femtosecond laser pulse (pump) is focused onto the sample. A second ultrashort laser pulse (probe) then interrogates the transmission changes due to the photoexcita-lions created by the pump pulse. The signal is recorded as a function of time delay between the two pulses. Therefore the dynamics of excited state absorption as... 

Strand cleavage studies have provided relative rate constants for hole transport versus the rate constant for the initial chemical event leading to strand cleavage [18-20]. However, they do not provide absolute rate constants for hole transport processes. Several years ago we introduced a method based on femtosecond time-resolved transient-absorption spectroscopy for investigating the dynamics of charge separation and charge recombination in synthetic DNA hairpins [21, 22]. Recently, we have found that extensions of this method into the nanosecond and microsecond time domains permit investigation of the dynamics of hole transport from a primary hole... 

The dynamics of photoinduced charge separation, kcs, and charge recombination, kcr (Fig. 2a), have been studied in several families of hairpins containing an Sa linker and a single G C base pair by means of femtosecond time-resolved transient absorption spectroscopy [27, 28]. Both the singlet state and anion radical of Sa have strong transient absorption centered at 575 nm. The difference in the independently determined band shapes for Sa ... 

In this chapter we have shown that the dynamics and spectroscopy of the initial events taking place in bacterial photosynthetic RCs can be described by the model shown in Table I and Fig. 19. Using these physical constants we can calculate the absorption spectra, ET rate constants, and fs time-resolved spectra. It should be noted that for processes taking place in sub-ps range, it is more reasonable not to use rate constant because the concept of rate constant requires the validity of the Markoff approximation [82,88]. Instead the... 

CL as an analytical tool has several advantages over other analytical techniques that involve light (mainly absorption spectroscopy and fluorometry) high detectability, high selectivity, wide dynamic range, and relatively inexpensive instrumentation. 

Infrared spectroscopy is the workhorse in this field, because it can quickly provide dynamical details, discriminate between different cluster sizes and phases [40], and sample a wide spectral range. It often yields valuable feedback for quantum chemical calculations. In contrast to some action spectroscopy techniques, IR absorption spectroscopy is not intrinsically size-selective. All cluster sizes generated in the expansion are observed together, and indirect methods of size assignment are needed. 

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