Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / Daniel Rolles / Imaging the structures of molecules, understanding the molecular dynamics in onization and dissociation processes and, most importantly, observing chemical reactions, i.e. the making and breaking of chemical bonds in real time, have become some of the most exciting topics in the atomic and molecular physics. The rapid advances of experimental tools such as synchrotron radiation light sources, free-electron lasers and continuing advances of tabletop femtosecond ultrashort lasers that provide laser pulses at a variety of wavelengths have opened new avenues for understanding the structure of matter and the dynamics of the chemical interactions. In addition, significant improvements in computational techniques and molecular dynamic simulations have provided complementary theoretical predictions on structures and chemical dynamics. The Coulomb explosion imaging method, which has been developed and applied in many studies in the last three decades, is a powerful way to study molecular structures. The method has mostly been applied to small diatomic molecules and to simple polyatomic molecules. In this thesis, Coulomb explosion imaging is applied to study the structure of isomers, molecules that have the same chemical formula but different chemical structures. Specifically, by taking inner-shell photoionization as well as strong-field ionization approaches to ionize and fragment the molecules and by using coincidence electron-ion-ion momentum imaging techniques to obtain the three-dimensional momentum of fragment ions, structures of isomers are distinguished by using the correlations among product ion momentum vectors. At first, the study aims to understand if the Coulomb explosion imaging of geometrical isomers can identify and separate cis and trans structures. Secondly, in order to extend the application of the Coulomb explosion imaging method to larger organic molecules to test the feasibility of the method for identifying structural isomers, photoionization studiesof 2,6- and 3,5-difluoroiodobenzene have been conducted. In addition, using the full three-dimensional kinematic information of multi-fold coincidence channels, breakup dynamics of both cis/trans geometric isomers and structural isomers, and in particular, sequential fragmentation dynamics of the difluoroiodobenzene isomers are studied. Furthermore, for each study, Coulomb explosion model simulations are conducted to complement the experimental results. The results of the Coulomb explosion imaging reseach in this thesis paves the way for future time-resolved Coulomb explosion imaging experiments aiming to understand the transient molecular dynamics such as photoinduced ring opening reactions and cis/trans isomerization processes in gas-phase molecules.

This thesis describes and develops two experimental techniques, Time Resolved Photoelectron Spectroscopy (TRPES), and Time Resolved Coincidence Imaging Spectroscopy (TRCIS), to study ultrafast gas phase chemical dynamics. We use TRPES to investigate the effects of methyl substitution on the electronic dynamics of the simple alpha, beta-enones acrolein, crotonaldehyde, methylvinylketone, and methacrolein following excitation to the S2 state. We determine that following excitation, the molecules move rapidly away from the Franck-Condon region reaching a conical intersection promoting relaxation to the S1 state. Once on the S1 surface, the trajectories access another conical intersection leading them to the ground state. Only small variations between molecules are seen in their S2 decay times. However, the position of methyl group substitution greatly affects the relaxation rate from the S1 surface. Ab initio calculations used to compare the geometries, energies, and topographies of the S1/S0 conical intersections of the molecules are not able to explain the variations in relaxation behaviour. We propose a model that uses dynamical factors of specific motions in the molecules to explain the differing nonadiabatic S1/S0 crossing rates. The second part of this thesis examines the issues involved with design and construction of a Coincidence Imaging Spectrometer. This type of spectrometer measures the 3-dimensional velocities of both photoelectrons and photoions generated from probing of laser induced photodissociation reactions. Importantly, the photoelectrons and photoions are measured in coincidence from single molecules, enabling measurements such as recoil frame photoelectron angular distributions and correlated photoelectron/photoion energy maps, inaccessible using existing techniques. How to optimize the spectrometer resolution through design, tuning, and calibration is discussed. The power of TRCIS is demonstrated with the investigation of the photodissociation dynamics of the NO dimer. TRPES experiments first identified a sequential kinetic model following 209nm excitation resulting in NO(X) (ground state) and NO(A) (excited state) products. Using TRCIS, it was possible to measure time resolved vibrational energy distributions of the products, indicating the extent of vibrational energy redistribution within the dimers prior to dissociation. Recoil frame photoelectron angular distributions and theoretical support allow identification of a previously disputed intermediate on the dissociation pathway. / Thesis (Ph.D, Chemistry) -- Queen's University, 2007-04-01 10:12:39.968

In this work, experimental and theoretical approaches are applied to the study of chemical reaction dynamics. In Chapter 2, two applications of transition state theory are presented: (1) Application of microcanonical transition state theory to determine the rate constant of dissociation of C2F3I after π∗ ← π excitation. It was found that this reaction has a very fast rate constant and thus is a promising system for testing the statistical assumption of molecular reaction dynamics. (2) A general rate constant expression for the reaction of atoms and molecules at surfaces was derived within the statistical framework of flexible transition state theory. In Chapter 4, a computationally efficient TDDFT approach was found to produce useful potential energy surface landscapes for application to non-adiabatic predissociative dynamics of the molecule CS2 after excitation from the ground state to the singlet C-state. In Chapter 5, ultrafast experimental results of excitation of CS2 to the predissociative neutral singlet C-state is presented. The bandwidth of the excitation laser was carefully tuned to span a two-component scattering resonance with each component differently evolving electronically with respect to excited state character during the quasi-bound oscillation. Scalar time-resolved photoelectron spectra (TRPES) and vector time-resolved photoelectron angular distribution (TRPAD) observables were recorded during the predissociation. The TRPES yield of photoelectrons was found to oscillate with a quantum beat pattern for the photoelectrons corresponding to ionization to the vibrationless cation ground state; this beat pattern was obscured for photoelectron energies corresponding to ionization from the vibrationally excited CS2 cation. The TRPAD data was recorded for two general molecular ensemble cases: with and without a pre-excitation alignment laser pulse. It was found that in the case of ensemble alignment (Chapter 6), the “molecular frame” TRPAD (i.e. TRMFPAD) was able to image the purely valence electronic dynamics of the evolving CS2 C-state. The unaligned ensemble TRPAD observable suffers from excessive orientational averaging and was unable to observe the quantum beat. Engineering efforts were also undertaken to eliminate scattered light background signal (Chapter 7, Appendix A) and improve laser stability as a function of ambient pressure (Appendix B) for TRMFPAD experiments. / Thesis (Ph.D, Chemistry) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-11 22:18:20.89