No Arabic abstract
Analysis of the electron density distribution in clusters composed of hydrogen fluoride, water, and ammonia molecules, especially within the hydrogen-bond domains, reveals the existence of both sigma- and pi-binding between molecules. The sigma-kind density distribution determines the mutual orientation of molecules. A pi-system may be delocalized conjugated, which provides additional stabilization of molecular clusters. In those clusters where the sequence of hydrogen bonds is not planar, a peculiar kind of pi-conjugation exists. HF anion and H5O2 cation are characterized by quasi-triple bonds between the electronegative atoms. The most long-lived species stabilized by delocalized pi-binding are rings and open or closed hoops composed of fused rings. It is conjugated pi-system that determines cooperativity phenomenon.
During compression of a water dimer calculated with high-precision first-principles methods, the trends of H-bond and O-H bond lengths show quantum effect of the electronic structure. We found that the H-bond length keeps decreasing, while the O-H bond length increases up to the stable point and decreases beyond it when the water dimer is further compressed. The remarkable properties are different from those observed in most previous researches which can be understood and extrapolated through classical simulation. The observations can be explained by the decrease in orbital overlap and change in the exchange repulsion interaction between water monomers. The dominant interaction between water monomers changes from electrostatic interaction to exchange repulsion at the turning point of the O-H bond length when the O...O distance is decreased. These findings highlight the quantum effect on the hydrogen bond in extreme conditions and play an important role in the recognition of the hydrogen bond structure and mechanism.
Using a hydrogen molecule as a test system we demonstrate how to compute the effective potential according to the formalism of the new density functional theory (DFT), in which the basic variable is the set of spherically averaged densities instead of the total density, used in the traditional DFT. The effective potential together the external potential, nuclear Coulomb potential, can be substituted in the Schrodinger like differential equation to obtain the spherically averaged electron density of the system. In the new method instead of one three-dimensional low symmetry equation one has to solve as many spherically symmetric equations as there are atoms in the system.
Hydrogen-bonded mixtures with varying concentration are a complicated networked system that demands a detection technique with both time and frequency resolutions. Hydrogen-bonded pyridine-water mixtures are studied by a time-frequency resolved coherent Raman spectroscopic technique. Femtosecond broadband dual-pulse excitation and delayed picosecond probing provide sub-picosecond time resolution in the mixtures temporal evolution. For different pyridine concentrations in water, asymmetric blue versus red shifts (relative to pure pyridine spectral peaks) were observed by simultaneously recording both the coherent anti-Stokes and Stokes Raman spectra. Macroscopic coherence dephasing times for the perturbed pyridine ring modes were observed in ranges of 0.9 - 2.6 picoseconds for both 18 and 10 cm-1 broad probe pulses. For high pyridine concentrations in water, an additional spectral broadening (or escalated dephasing) for a triangular ring vibrational mode was observed. This can be understood as a result of ultrafast collective emissions from coherently excited ensemble of pairs of pyridine molecules bound to water molecules.
Doubly-excited Rydberg states of helium (He) nanodroplets have been studied using synchrotron radiation. We observed Fano resonances related to the atomic N = 2,0 series as a function of droplet size. Although similar qualitatively to their atomic counterparts, the resonance lines are broader and exhibit a shift in energy which increases for the higher excited states. Furthermore, additional resonances are observed which are not seen in atomic systems. We discuss these features in terms of delocalized atomic states perturbed by the surrounding He atoms and compare to singly excited droplets.
We have studied complexes of gold atoms and imidazole (C$_3$N$_2$H$_4$, abbreviated Im) produced in helium nanodroplets. Following the ionization of the doped droplets we detect a broad range of different Au$_m$Im$_n^+$ complexes, however we find that for specific values of $m$ certain $n$ are magic and thus particularly abundant. Our density functional theory calculations indicate that these abundant clusters sizes are partially the result of particularly stable complexes, e.g. AuIm$_2^+$, and partially due to a transition in fragmentation patterns from the loss of neutral imidazole molecules for large systems to the loss of neutral gold atoms for smaller systems.