Vibrational Predissociation Dynamics of Weakly Bonded Dimers: A Summary

Abstract

During the past year we have seen a dramatic increase in the breadth and depth of experimental studies into the vibrational predissociation dynamics of van der Waals (vdW) molecules, and especially vdW dimers. The interest in this area has been fostered by intriguing, early results of frequency domain measurements, and has been facilitated by advances jointly in molecular beam and laser technologies (after all, most of these experiments are beam photodissociation experiments). Activity in the area of van der Waals vibrational predissociation dynamics encompasses 1) theory, 2) frequency domain measurements, and 3) time domain and energy distribution measurements. In the anticipation of relating very detailed dynamical information to the inter-molecular forces responsible for the van der Waals bonding it is unfortunate that, as yet, there is no single system upon which all three approaches have been successfully used.