Intramolecular Dynamics

The Fifteenth Jerusalem Symposium reflected the high standards of the former international scientific meetings, which convene once a year at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem to discuss a specific topic in the broad area of quantum chemistry and biochemistry. The topic at this year's Jerusalem Symposium was intramo lecular dynamics, a subject of central interest for theoreticians, che mists and biologists. During the last two decades, there has been remarkable pro gress in our understanding of time dependent phenomena. The development and application of the modern techniques of quantum mechanics and sta tistical mechanics to excited-state dynamics and to chemical and biophy sical systems constitutes a fast developing current research area. The main theme of the Symposium was built around a conceptual framework for the elucidation of photophysical and photochemical phenomena in atoms, molecules, van der Waals complexes and clusters, condensed phases, poly mers and biological supermolecules. The interdisciplinary nature of this research field was deliberated by intensive and extensive interactions between scientists from different disciplines and between theory and experiment. This volume provides a record of the invited lectures at the Symposium.

The main goal of this book is to give a systematic description of intramolecular quantum dynamics on the basis of only the symmetry principles. In this respect, the book has no analogs in the world literature. This approach does not introduce a configuration space of the molecular system in explicit form at all and, consequently, does not consider in explicit form the wave functions of the coordinates of this space. However, precisely because of its deep philosophical and technical difference this approach is the only possible for the solution of many topical problems of the internal dynamics of molecules. The obtained models lead to a simple, purely algebraic, scheme of calculation and are rigorous in the sense that their correctness is limited only to the correct choice of symmetry of the internal dynamics. The book is basically intended for scientists working in the field of molecular spectroscopy, quantum and structural chemistry. The reader is not supposed to know the apparatus of group representation theory needed for application of symmetry methods in quantum intramolecular dynamics since the first part of the book is dedicated to it.

Since the first stimulated emission pumping (SEP) experiments more than a decade ago, this technique has proven powerful for studying vibrationally excited molecules. SEP is now widely used by increasing numbers of research groups to investigate fundamental problems in spectroscopy, intramolecular dynamics, intermolecular interactions, and even reactions. SEP provides rotationally pre-selected spectra of vibrationally highly excited molecules undergoing large amplitude motions. A unique feature of SEP is the ability to access systematically a wide variety of extreme excitations localized in various parts of a molecule, and to prepare populations in specific, high vibrational levels. SEP has made it possible to ask and answer specific questions about intramolecular vibrational redistribution and the role of vibrational excitation in chemical reactions.

This second edition is based on the successful concept of the first edition in presenting a unified perspective on molecular charge and energy transfer processes. The authors bridge the regimes of coherent and dissipative dynamics, thus establishing the connection between classic rate theories and modern treatments of ultrafast phenomena. The book serves as an introduction for graduate students and researchers. Among the new topics of this second edition are - semiclassical and quantum-classical hybrid formulations of molecular dynamics - the basics of femtosecond nonlinear spectroscopy - electron transfer through molecular bridges and proteins - multidimensional tunneling in proton transfer reactions - two-exciton states and exciton annihilation in biological and nonbiological chromophore complexes More illustrating examples as well as an enlarged reference list are added. A new chapter gives an introduction into the theory of laser pulse control of molecular transfer processes.

From March 30th to April 3rd, 1992, a NATO Advanced Research workshop entitled "Time Dependent Quantum Molecular Dynamics: Theory and Experiment" was held at Snowbird, Utah. The organizing committee consisted of J. BROECKHOVE (Antwerp, Belgium), L. CEDERBAUM (Heidelberg, Germany), L. LATHOUWERS (Antwerp, Belgium), N. OHRN (Gainesville, Florida) and J. SIMONS (Salt Lake City, Utah). Fifty-two participants from eleven different countries attended the meeting at which thirty-three talks and one poster session were held. Twenty-eight participants submitted contributions to the proceedings of the meeting, which are reproduced in this volume. The workshop brought together experts in different areas 0 f molecular quantum dynamics, all adhering to the time dependent approach. The aim was to discuss and compare methods and applications. The ~amiliarityo~ the aUdience with the concepts o~ time dependent approaches greatly facilitated topical discussions and probing towards new applications. A broad area of subject matter was covered including time resolved laser chemistry, intramolecular dynamics, photodissociation dynamics, reactive and inelastic collisions as well as new time dependent methodologies. This diversity in applications is reflected in the contributions included in this volume .

Covers both molecular and reaction dynamics. The work presents important theroetical and computational approaches to the study of energy transfer within and between molecules, discussing the application of these approaches to problems of experimental interest. It also describes time-dependent and time-independent methods, variational and perturbative techniques, iterative and direct approaches, and methods based upon the use of physical grids of finite sets of basic function.