Molecular system vibrational states

Much of the previous section dealt with two-level systems. Real molecules, however, are not two-level systems for many purposes there are only two electronic states that participate, but each of these electronic states has many states corresponding to different quantum levels for vibration and rotation. A coherent femtosecond pulse has a bandwidth which may span many vibrational levels when the pulse impinges on the molecule it excites a coherent superposition of all tliese vibrational states—a vibrational wavepacket. In this section we deal with excitation by one or two femtosecond optical pulses, as well as continuous wave excitation in section A 1.6.4 we will use the concepts developed here to understand nonlinear molecular electronic spectroscopy. 

Modem photochemistry (IR, UV or VIS) is induced by coherent or incoherent radiative excitation processes [4, 5, 6 and 7]. The first step within a photochemical process is of course a preparation step within our conceptual framework, in which time-dependent states are generated that possibly show IVR. In an ideal scenario, energy from a laser would be deposited in a spatially localized, large amplitude vibrational motion of the reacting molecular system, which would then possibly lead to the cleavage of selected chemical bonds. This is basically the central idea behind the concepts for a mode selective chemistry , introduced in the late 1970s [127], and has continuously received much attention [10, 117. 122. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134... 

Solutions to a Schrodinger equation for this last Hamiltonian (7) describe the vibrational, rotational, and translational states of a molecular system. This release of HyperChem does not specifically explore solutions to the nuclear Schrodinger equation, although future releases may. Instead, as is often the case, a classical approximation is made replacing the Hamiltonian by the classical energy ... 

This argument can be generalized to any number of subsystems and energy levels. For the case of a molecular system in a given electronic state, the factorization into translational, vibrational, and rotational contributions gives... 

Energy calculations and geometry optimizations ignore the vibrations in molecular systems. In this way, these computations use an idealized view of nuclear position. In reality, the nuclei in molecules are constantly in motion. In equilibrium states, these vibrations are regular and predictable, and molecules can be identified by their characteristic spectra. 

Easy availability of ultrafast high intensity lasers has fuelled the dream of their use as molecular scissors to cleave selected bonds (1-3). Theoretical approaches to laser assisted control of chemical reactions have kept pace and demonstrated remarkable success (4,5) with experimental results (6-9) buttressing the theoretical claims. The different tablished theoretical approaches to control have been reviewed recently (10). While the focus of these theoretical approaches has been on field design, the photodissociation yield has also been found to be extremely sensitive to the initial vibrational state from which photolysis is induced and results for (11), HI (12,13), HCl (14) and HOD (2,3,15,16) reveal a crucial role for the initial state of the system in product selectivity and enhancement. This critical dependence on initial vibrational state indicates that a suitably optimized linear superposition of the field free vibrational states may be another route to selective control of photodissociation. 

Longuet-Higgins phase-based treatment, two-dimensional two-surface system, scattering calculation, 154-155 three-state molecular system, 134-137 two-state molecular system, single conical intersection solution, 98-101 permutational symmetry, degenerate/near-degenerate vibrational levels, 730-733 Polyene molecules ... 

The total energy Eo of a molecular system in its vibrational ground state can be written as the sum of the electronic energy Ee at the equilibrium geometry and the zero-point vibrational energy (ZPVE), denoted as Ezpv,... 

As has been mentioned above, the inclusion of basis functions (49) with high power values, nik, is very essential for the calculations of molecular systems. It is especially important for highly vibrationally excited states where there are many highly localized peaks in the nuclear correlation function. To illustrate this point, we calculated this correlation function (it corresponds to the internuclear distance, r -p = r ), which is the same as the probability density of pseudoparticle 1. The definition of this quantity is as follows ... 

EF Sl in the lowest vibrational state is negative. For this reason it would be interesting to study an interaetion of the hydrogen moleeule in the EF state with an external atomic or molecular system. 

Every example of a vibration we have introduced so far has dealt with a localized set of atoms, either as a gas-phase molecule or a molecule adsorbed on a surface. Hopefully, you have come to appreciate from the earlier chapters that one of the strengths of plane-wave DFT calculations is that they apply in a natural way to spatially extended materials such as bulk solids. The vibrational states that characterize bulk materials are called phonons. Like the normal modes of localized systems, phonons can be thought of as special solutions to the classical description of a vibrating set of atoms that can be used in linear combinations with other phonons to describe the vibrations resulting from any possible initial state of the atoms. Unlike normal modes in molecules, phonons are spatially delocalized and involve simultaneous vibrations in an infinite collection of atoms with well-defined spatial periodicity. While a molecule s normal modes are defined by a discrete set of vibrations, the phonons of a material are defined by a continuous spectrum of phonons with a continuous range of frequencies. A central quantity of interest when describing phonons is the number of phonons with a specified vibrational frequency, that is, the vibrational density of states. Just as molecular vibrations play a central role in describing molecular structure and properties, the phonon density of states is central to many physical properties of solids. This topic is covered in essentially all textbooks on solid-state physics—some of which are listed at the end of the chapter. 

In Reference [38], it is further shown that suppression of the spontaneous emission can be equally well achieved in a molecular system. The difficulty with molecular systems lies in the fact that there is usually a multitude of final states to which the system can emit. In this example, suppressing the emission from a particular vibrational state a) belonging to the 1 S (A) electronic manifold of the Sodium dimer is considered, when aided by a particular vibrational state b) belonging to the 2 electronic manifold. The relevant potentials are displayed in Figure 9.12. 

A generic Jablonski diagram for a molecular system is shown in Figure 15.2. Singlet states and triplet states are shown as separate stacks. Associated with each electronic state is a vibrational/rotational manifold. The vibrational/rotational manifolds of dif-... 

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