KEYWORDS: Terahertz radiation, Liquids, Energy transfer, Ultrafast phenomena, Chemical reactions, Thermodynamics, Raman spectroscopy, Optical spheres, Molecular interactions, Molecular energy transfer
In this work, we perform Terahertz (THz) Kerr Effect (TKE) experiments on several types of molecular liquids with dissolved iodide anions. We couple high intensity single-cycle THz pulses to the re-orientational motions of the aforementioned liquids and observe a subsequent energy transfer to the translational degrees of freedom of the ionic solutes manifesting as an increase of their translational kinetic energy. Surprisingly, this solvent-to-solute energy transfer is found to scale significantly with the particular intermolecular interactions of the liquids, being more dramatic when a hydrogen-bonding network is present. Our observations set the basis for future coherent control of chemical reactions in the liquid state, by means of THz radiation.
In this work we focus separately on the fundamental interactions of intense single-cycle THz magnetic and electric fields with molecular liquids. We demonstrate that intense THz magnetic fields, from table-top sources, are able to induce Faraday rotation in liquids in ultrafast timescales. Analogously to the electric Hall effect in conducting materials, this observation is explained in terms of a transient molecular Hall effect, due to an instantaneous optically induced polarization in the presence of the THz magnetic field and opens a new avenue for successful disentanglement of electronic versus nuclear dynamics in complex molecular liquids. Moreover, we show that by tuning the frequency and phase of the electric field of intense THz pulses we can achieve different molecular rotational distributions in liquids, paving the way not only for better fundamental understanding of the intermolecular interactions, but also for achieving THz coherent control of chemical reactions.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.