Electronic transitions, intensity selection rules

Generally, the room temperature emission spectra of Ln species show incompletely resolved stmcture within the peaks. However, an advantageous attribute of luminescent Ln complexes is the dependence of this emission spectral form on the specific coordination environment of the ion. This sensitivity arises from the selection rules associated with intraconfigurational (4f-4f) electronic transitions the selection rules for forced electric dipole transitions are relaxed due to 5d and 4/orbital mixing. In reality the majority of the complexes included for discussion here are non-centrosymmetric, low symmetry species and the relative intensities of the 4/-4/transitions are generally determined by the induced electric dipole transition selection rules. It should also be noted that visibly emissive Eu also possesses a magnetic dipole transition, F, whose intensity is relatively independent of the coordination environment [1,9]. 

Not all of the transitions that at first sight appear possible are observed. Certain restrictions, called selection rules, must be considered. One important selection rule states that transitions that involve a change in the spin quantum number of an electron during the transition are not allowed to take place they are called forbidden transitions. Other selection rules deal with the numbers of electrons that may be excited at one time, with symmetry properties of the molecule and of the electronic states, and with other factors that need not be discussed here. Transitions that are formally forbidden by the selection rules are often not observed. However, theoretical treatments are rather approximate, and in certain cases forbidden transitions are observed, although the intensity of the absorption tends to be much lower than for transitions that are allowed by the selection rules. The n n transition is the most common type of forbidden transition. 

While both populations are equivalent in principle, being related by a unitary transformation, one of them may be more clo.sely related to experiment than the other. For example, if there are dipole. selection rules forbidding the optical transition to or from a subset of the interacting electronic states, these selection rules are usually obeyed to a much larger extent in the diabatic basis than in the adiabatic ba.si.s. Then the diabatic electronic populations are monitored via the intensities of spontaneous and induced emission (the adiabatic populations may be more relevant if the optical transition takes place within the interacting manifold). More specifically, in the limit of ideally short pump and probe pulses the time-resolved pump-probe signal as a function of the delay time has been shown to be proportional to the diabatic population, equation (51). For the more realistic case of finite pulse durations the situation is more complex. In the present article we leave these problems aside and focus on the purely intramolecular aspects of the vibronic dynamics. The various aspects associated with their detection in real time have been surveyed in a recent review article. ... 

Most stable polyatomic molecules whose absorption intensities are easily studied have filled-shell, totally synuuetric, singlet ground states. For absorption spectra starting from the ground state the electronic selection rules become simple transitions are allowed to excited singlet states having synuuetries the same as one of the coordinate axes, v, y or z. Other transitions should be relatively weak. 

Often it is possible to resolve vibrational structure of electronic transitions. In this section we will briefly review the symmetry selection rules and other factors controlling the intensity of individual vibronic bands. 

A very weak peak at 348 mn is the 4 origin. Since the upper state here has two quanta of v, its vibrational syimnetry is A and the vibronic syimnetry is so it is forbidden by electric dipole selection rules. It is actually observed here due to a magnetic dipole transition [21]. By magnetic dipole selection rules the A2- A, electronic transition is allowed for light with its magnetic field polarized in the z direction. It is seen here as having about 1 % of the intensity of the syimnetry-forbidden electric dipole transition made allowed by... 

Another related issue is the computation of the intensities of the peaks in the spectrum. Peak intensities depend on the probability that a particular wavelength photon will be absorbed or Raman-scattered. These probabilities can be computed from the wave function by computing the transition dipole moments. This gives relative peak intensities since the calculation does not include the density of the substance. Some types of transitions turn out to have a zero probability due to the molecules symmetry or the spin of the electrons. This is where spectroscopic selection rules come from. Ah initio methods are the preferred way of computing intensities. Although intensities can be computed using semiempirical methods, they tend to give rather poor accuracy results for many chemical systems. 

Moseley found that each K spectrum of Barkla contains two lines, Ka and K(3, and that the L spectra are more complex. Later important work, especially by Siegbahn,38 has shown that M, N, and O spectra exist and are more complex in their turn. Relatively numerous low-intensity lines are now known to exist in all series. Fortunately, the analytical chemist can afford to ignore most of these low-intensity lines in his practical applications of x-ray methods at present. It generally suffices for him to know that x-ray spectra at their most complex are enormously simpler than emission spectra involving valence electrons, and that most x-ratr lines are satisfactorily accounted for on the basis of the simple selection rules that govern electron transitions between energy states. 

In collaboration with E.L. Sibert, we have learned to interpret these Franck-Con-don forbidden, pure torsional band intensities in S,-S0 absorption spectra quantitatively and thus place the key ml+ assignment on firm ground.27 The forbidden bands follow the selection rule Am = 3, so we need a perturbation of the form Vel cos 3a. Working in an adiabatic representation with the S0 and S, electronic states denoted by y0(g a) and /,( a) and the torsional states by m" and m, the electric dipole transition moment is,... 

The selection rules appropriate for a shake-up transition are of the monopole type2, 76. The intensity of a shake-up peak depends on the overlap integral between the lower state molecular orbital from which the electron is excited (in the neutral molecule) and the upper state molecular orbital to which the electron is excited (in the core-ionized molecule). Consequently one expects transitions of the type au au, ag " ag> 7T nu, and irg - ng with g u and u - g transitions forbidden. 

The strength or intensity of absorption is related to the dipole strength of transition D or square of the transition moment integral M m , and is pressed in terms of oscillator strength / or integrated molar extinction jfe Jv. A transition with /= 1, is known as totally allowed transition. But the transitions between all the electronic, vibrational or rotational states are not equally permitted. Some are forbidden which can become allowed under certain conditions and then appear as weak absorption bands. The rules which govern such transitions are known as selection rules. For atomic energy levels, these selection rules have been empirically obtained from a comparison between the number of lines theoretically... 

The induced magnetic dipole moment has transformation properties similar to rotations Rx, Rt, and Rz about the coordinate axes. These transformations are important in deducing the intensity of electronic transitions (selection rules) and the optical rotatory strength of electronic transitions respectively. If P and /fare the probabilities of electric and magnetic transitions respectively, then... 

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