Collisional Energy Transfer In Highly Vibrationally Excited Polyatomic Molecules

The transfer of energy in isolated or colliding molecules is a fundamental process with practical consequences for complex phenomena occurring in atmospheric chemistry, combustion, molecular lasers, plasmas, and a host of other environments containing energetic species. We have developed a technique that combines vibrational overtone excitation, to prepare highly vibrationally excited initial states, and time-resolved spectroscopic detection, to probe the evolution of the prepared state, for studying energy transfer in vibrationally energized molecules. We have used this approach to determine directly, for the first time, the frequencies of the three ungerade vibrations in the first electronically excited state of acetylene. Using this information we have characterized highly vibrationally excited states of acetylene and directly the frequencies and rotational constants of the perturbing vibrational states at these energies. Combining these spectroscopic insights on the vibrationally and electronically excited states of acetylene has allowed us to determine the energy transfer rates and pathways in the collisional relaxation of a polyatomic molecule containing 10,000 cm-1 of vibrational energy, Rotational energy transfer is very rapid, occurring on about every other collision, but is essentially unaffected by the identity of the vibrational state in which the rotational relaxation occurs.