[MOS] October 7, 2014, Arthur Suits, Wayne State University

[Zina M Queen]

Seminar on
Modern Optics and Spectroscopy

New Windows into reaction dynamics
Arthur Suits,
Wayne State University

Tuesday, October 7, 2014
12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
The field of chemical reaction dynamics provides a molecular-level foundation for the understanding of macroscopic chemical phenomena. It is built from the study of elementary reactions and great strides have been made in the past several decades developing a full quantum description of the simplest chemical reactions. The challenge before us now is to extend these powerful methods to more complex systems: to polyatomic molecules with many possible product channels in reaction, and to reactions involving multiple excited electronic states. We will showcase three ways in which new spectroscopic and experimental approaches developed in our laboratory yield insight into chemical reactivity in these frontier areas. The first involves a means to detect simultaneously the velocity and spin polarization of hydrogen atoms in photodissociation. This is turn can yield insight into nonadiabatic transitions at surface crossings in polyatomic systems. Our second example combines visible and infrared excitation of the nitrate radical to explore the role of roaming dynamics in the ground and excited states of this fascinating molecule. The last example is a new approach combining chirped-pulse microwave spectroscopy with pulsed uniform supersonic flows, a project being developed in collaboration with the Field group at MIT. This approach promises a new era in the study of reaction dynamics of complex systems with isomer-specific product branching and reaction kinetics determined using pure rotational spectroscopy.

Grier Room, MIT Bldg 34-401
Refreshments served after the lecture
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/mos/attachments/20141002/88f989cb/attachment.htm