Direct observation of spin-forbidden transitions through the use of suitably polarized light

The study of excited triplet states of a molecular system is a difficult task because accessing them involves forbidden transitions from the singlet ground state. Nevertheless, absorption spectra of many molecules present, at low energies, the weak fingerprint of these triplet states. At higher ener...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2014-06, Vol.5 (1), p.4126-4126, Article 4126
Main Authors: Lévêque, Camille, Peláez, Daniel, Köppel, Horst, Taïeb, Richard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
119/118
639/638/440
Chemical Sciences
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
or physical chemistry
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Theoretical and
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The study of excited triplet states of a molecular system is a difficult task because accessing them involves forbidden transitions from the singlet ground state. Nevertheless, absorption spectra of many molecules present, at low energies, the weak fingerprint of these triplet states. At higher energies this information is usually masked by the intense signal of the singlet states. Here we show, for the specific case of the sulphur dioxide molecule, that the combined use of polarized light and molecular alignment can enhance the triplet part of the spectrum, even making it the only absorption process. The study of excited triplet states in molecular systems is in some cases hindered by the difficulty in accessing them and the intense signals of singlet states. Here, the authors show that the combination of polarized light and molecular alignment can enhance the triplet absorption for sulphur dioxide.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms5126