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Updated: Aug 10, 2026

Novel Techniques for Observing Structural Dynamics of Photoresponsive Liquid Crystals
Published on: May 29, 2018
Temperature-dependent optical Kerr effect spectroscopy of aromatic liquids
Brian J Loughnane1, Alessandra Scodinu, John T Fourkas
1Eugene F. Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467, USA.
Abstract:
Ultrafast optical Kerr effect (OKE) spectroscopy has been used to study the temperature-dependent dynamics of five aromatic liquids: benzene, benzene-d(6), hexafluorobenzene, mesitylene, and 1,3,5-trifluorobenzene. The intermediate response time of all of the liquids was found to scale with the collective orientational correlation time, as has been observed for other simple liquids. The spectra of hexafluorobenzene, 1,3,5-trifluorobenzene, and mesitylene are qualitatively different from those of the other liquids and exhibit different behavior with temperature. These spectra allow us to assess the influence of different molecular parameters on the shape of the OKE spectrum. On the basis of these data, we propose a model that links the differences in the OKE spectra to corresponding differences in the local ordering of the liquids.
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