Nonlinear Raman Studies of Weakly Bound Complexes and Clusters in Molecular Beams

Abstract

In the past decade, largely because of advances in the vibrational spectroscopic study of species in cold molecular beams, significant progress has been made in elucidating the ground-state properties of weakly bound complexes and clusters. Indeed, vibrational results have been essential to the deduction of that most central of properties in van der Waals molecule studies -- the intermolecular potential energy surface. This paper reviews applications of nonlinear Raman spectroscopies to the study of van der Waals complexes and clusters in cold, supersonic molecular beams. The review is limited to those studies that have employed Raman schemes unenhanced by vibronic resonance. Thus, the authors do not include consideration of the various stimulated emission spectroscopies or resonantly enhanced coherent Raman methods. The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2 the relevant spectroscopic schemes along with their strengths and weaknesses are outlined. Section 3 pertains to results on small homogeneous complexes and clusters. Section 4 deals with results on heterogeneous complexes. In section 5, the results on larger homogeneous clusters are outlined. Section 6 then deals with results on heterogeneous clusters. Finally, section 7 is a summary and conclusion. 102 refs.