Short Time Dynamics of Highly Excited Small Polyatomic Molecules Extracted From Laser Spectra

Abstract

The recent spectroscopic investigations of vibrational dynamics of highly excited acetylene (C₂H₂), predissociation of vibronically excited NO₂, and direct dissociation of OCS in the deep vacuum ultraviolet region are introduced. It is demonstrated that (i) rich and specific information on the excited state dynamics is encoded in various types of observed spectra such as stimulated emission pumping, dispersed fluorescence, laser induced fluorescence, absorption, and photofragment excitation spectra and that (ii) the early stage dynamics after photoexcitation can be extracted from observed spectra by the recently developed techniques, i.e. feature state assignments, a superpolyad Hamiltonian model, the extended autocorrelation method, and hierarchical, statistical and Fourier transform analysis methods.