Vibrational spectroscopy Raman scattering

In view of the severity of the complications which can be experienced in assessing, by diffraction methods, the degree of order in a short hydrogen bond, it is important to state that vibrational spectroscopy (Raman, IR and neutron inelastic scattering) can provide definitive evidence as to the local effective symmetry of the bond see, for example. Chapters 21, 23 and 24. Indeed, in situations of this type, an ideal requirement would be that a mutually consistent structural and vibrational description be achieved before our diffraction-obtained structural picture can be accepted unequivocally. 

Vibrational spectroscopy provides detailed infonnation on both structure and dynamics of molecular species. Infrared (IR) and Raman spectroscopy are the most connnonly used methods, and will be covered in detail in this chapter. There exist other methods to obtain vibrational spectra, but those are somewhat more specialized and used less often. They are discussed in other chapters, and include inelastic neutron scattering (INS), helium atom scattering, electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), photoelectron spectroscopy, among others. 

Raman scattering has been discussed by many authors. As in the case of IR vibrational spectroscopy, the interaction is between the electromagnetic field and a dipole moment, however in this case the dipole moment is induced by the field itself The induced dipole is pj j = a E, where a is the polarizability. It can be expressed in a Taylor series expansion in coordinate isplacement... 

Raman scattering is normally of such very low intensity that gas phase Raman spectroscopy is one of the more difficult techniques. This is particularly the case for vibration-rotation Raman spectroscopy since scattering involving vibrational transitions is much weaker than that involving rotational transitions, which were described in Sections 5.3.3 and 5.3.5. For this reason we shall consider here only the more easily studied infrared vibration-rotation spectroscopy which must also be investigated in the gas phase (or in a supersonic jet, see Section 9.3.8). 

Resonance Raman Spectroscopy. If the excitation wavelength is chosen to correspond to an absorption maximum of the species being studied, a 10 —10 enhancement of the Raman scatter of the chromophore is observed. This effect is called resonance enhancement or resonance Raman (RR) spectroscopy. There are several mechanisms to explain this phenomenon, the most common of which is Franck-Condon enhancement. In this case, a band intensity is enhanced if some component of the vibrational motion is along one of the directions in which the molecule expands in the electronic excited state. The intensity is roughly proportional to the distortion of the molecule along this axis. RR spectroscopy has been an important biochemical tool, and it may have industrial uses in some areas of pigment chemistry. Two biological appHcations include the deterrnination of helix transitions of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (18), and the elucidation of several peptide stmctures (19). A review of topics in this area has been pubHshed (20). 

Chapter 3 is devoted to pressure transformation of the unresolved isotropic Raman scattering spectrum which consists of a single Q-branch much narrower than other branches (shaded in Fig. 0.2(a)). Therefore rotational collapse of the Q-branch is accomplished much earlier than that of the IR spectrum as a whole (e.g. in the gas phase). Attention is concentrated on the isotropic Q-branch of N2, which is significantly narrowed before the broadening produced by weak vibrational dephasing becomes dominant. It is remarkable that isotropic Q-branch collapse is indifferent to orientational relaxation. It is affected solely by rotational energy relaxation. This is an exceptional case of pure frequency modulation similar to the Dicke effect in atomic spectroscopy [13]. The only difference is that the frequency in the Q-branch is quadratic in J whereas in the Doppler contour it is linear in translational velocity v. Consequently the rotational frequency modulation is not Gaussian but is still Markovian and therefore subject to the impact theory. The Keilson-... 

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