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Updated: Jun 25, 2026

Direct Imaging of Laser-driven Ultrafast Molecular Rotation
Published on: February 4, 2017
A discrete variable representation method for studying the rovibrational quantum dynamics of molecules with more than
Xiao-Gang Wang1, Tucker Carrington
1Chemistry Department, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada. xiaogang.wang@umontreal.ca
Abstract:
Established multidimensional discrete variable representations (DVRs) are derived from a direct product basis. They are commonly used to compute vibrational spectra and have also been employed to determine rovibrational spectra of triatomic molecules. We show that for J>0 calculations the DVR is also advantageous for molecules with more than three atoms. We use a basis of products of Wigner functions (for rotation) and DVR functions (for vibration). A key advantage of the DVR is the fact that one can prune the basis: many DVR functions can be discarded from the original direct product basis. This significantly reduces the cost of the calculation. We have implemented a mapping procedure to exploit this prune-ability. We explain how to treat Coriolis terms in a parity-adapted basis. The method is tested by computing rovibrational levels of HFCO.
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