A simple model for predicting the course of photochemical reactions

Abstract

The possibility of building and using a simplified model with constant (time-invariant) reaction probabilities for rapid simulation of photochemical processes with the required reliability of the prediction has been shown. A relation between the probabilities of transformations and fundamental molecular characteristics (optical transition probabilities and quantum beat frequencies referring to a nonradiative reaction transition) that can be quantitatively determined with a good degree of certainty has been revealed. For monomolecular isomerization reactions as an example, the attainable level of the accuracy of prediction by the simple model has been estimated, which has been shown to be ∼10% in most cases. It is important that the prediction of the order of magnitude of the key characteristics of photochemical processes, such as quantum yield and the reaction rate, is definitely correct as is required in most applications of photochemistry.