Photodissociation of alkyl iodides in helium nanodroplets. II. Solvation dynamics

The solvation dynamics of nonthermal species in liquid helium has been investigated by photolyzing alkyl iodide molecules, CH3I, C2H5I, and CF3I, embedded in helium nanodroplets. Iodine and CH3 fragments are found to leave the droplets solvated by a finite number of helium atoms, this in contrast to C2H5 and CF3 fragments. The speed distributions of the IHeN and CH3HeN complexes show a prominent correlation with the degree of solvation N. It is argued that this correlation is caused by a dynamical adjustment of the solvation structure size to the relative speed of the traveling fragments as they pass through the helium bath. The absence of C2H5HeN and CF3HeN complexes is attributed to the large internal energy of these alkyl fragments which leads to a rapid destruction of any possibly formed complexes.

Kinetic and dynamic aspects of lifetime oscillations in the predissociation of hydrogen chloride ions

The predissociation dynamics of hydrogen chloride ions (HCl+ and DCl+) in the electronic A 2Sigma+ state has been investigated by solving the time dependent Schrödinger equation. The predissociation lifetime is shown to strongly depend on the vibrational and the rotational quantum number, with quasi-periodic oscillations. Rovibronic states, which exhibit lifetimes about 1 order of magnitude larger than those of neighboring states, are termed rotational islands of stability (RIS). These RIS can be correlated with characteristic reference energies, e.g., the difference between rovibronic eigenenergy and the energy of crossing of rotronic bound and repulsive potentials. The origin of these RIS is illustrated by model studies of the positions of the nuclear wave functions involved.