English

Complete Reconstruction of the Wavefunction of a Reacting Molecule by Four-Wave Mixing Spectroscopy

Quantum Physics 2015-05-27 v1 Chemical Physics

Abstract

Probing the real time dynamics of a reacting molecule remains one of the central challenges in chemistry. In this letter we show how the time-dependent wavefunction of an excited-state reacting molecule can be completely reconstructed from resonant coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy. The method assumes knowledge of the ground-state potential but not of any excited-state potential, although we show that the latter can be computed once the time-dependent excited-state wavefunction is known. The formulation applies to polyatomics as well as diatomics and to bound as well as dissociative excited potentials. We demonstrate the method on the Li2_2 molecule with its bound first excited-state, and on a model Li2_2-like system with a dissociative excited state potential.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1101.4354,
  title  = {Complete Reconstruction of the Wavefunction of a Reacting Molecule by Four-Wave Mixing Spectroscopy},
  author = {David Avisar and David J. Tannor},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1101.4354},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

The article includes 5 pages. One page of supplementary material is also included. The paper was submitted and now resubmitted to PRL