Rotor dynamics analogies

Nonpolar and dipolar altitudinal rotors (compounds 2 and 3 in Fig. 17.3) have been synthesized. 19F NMR spectroscopy showed that the barrier to rotation in 3 was extremely low in solution. Both systems have then been immobilized on Au(l 11) surfaces and studied with a variety of techniques.57 The results obtained indicated that for a fraction of molecules the static electric field from the scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) tip could induce an orientation change in the dipolar rotor but not in the nonpolar analog (for a recent example of an azimuthal molecular rotor controlled by the STM tip, see Reference 58). Compound 3 can exist as three pairs of helical enantiomers because of the propeller-like conformation of the tetra-arylcyclobutadienes. For at least one out of the three diastereomers, an asymmetric potential energy surface can be predicted by molecular dynamics simulations on application of an alternating electric field.55... 

Considering the sensitivity of classical chaotic systems to external perturbations, and the ubiquitous nature of chaotic dynamics in larger systems, it is important to 1 establish that quantum mechanics allows for control in chaotic systems as well. [ One simple molecular system that displays quantirm chaos is the rotational exci- tation of a diatomic molecule using pulsed microwave radiation [227], Under the conditions adopted below, this system is a molecular analog of the delta-lacked ij rotor, that is, a rotor that is periodically lacked by a delta fiinction potential, which 4 is a paradigm for chaotic dynamics [228, 229], The observed energy absorption of such systems is called quantum chaotic diffusion. 

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