Femtosecond time-resolved studies of coherent vibrational Raman scattering in large gas-phase molecules

Abstract

Results are presented from femtosecond time-resolved coherent Raman experiments in which we excite and monitor vibrational coherence in gas-phase samples of benzene and 1,3,5-hexatriene. Different physical mechanisms for coherence decay are seen in these two molecules. In benzene, where the Raman polarizability is largely isotropic, the Q branch of the vibrational Raman spectrum is the primary feature excited. Molecules in different rotational states have different Q-branch transition frequencies due to vibration–rotation interaction. Thus, the macroscopic polarization that is observed in these experiments decays because it has many frequency components from molecules in different rotational states, and these frequency components go out of phase with each other. In 1,3,5-hexatriene, the Raman excitation produces molecules in a coherent superposition of rotational states, through (O, P, R, and S branch) transitions that are strong due to the large anisotropy of the Raman polarizability. The coherent superposition of rotational states corresponds to initially spatially oriented, vibrationally excited, molecules that are freely rotating. The rotation of molecules away from the initial orientation is primarily responsible for the coherence decay in this case. These experiments produce large (∼10% efficiency) Raman shifted signals with modest excitation pulse energies (10 μJ) demonstrating the feasibility of this approach for a variety of gas phase studies.