Statistical mechanics of hydrated electron recombination in liquid and supercritical water

The photochemical yield of hydrated electrons as a function of temperature in liquid and supercritical water is treated in terms of energy fluctuations of the medium. The geminate pair, consisting of a positive ion and a hydrated electron, is regarded as a H-like atom embedded in a completely relaxed dielectric continuum. If the local medium energy is larger than the ionization energy of this atom, the electron escapes its geminate partner. By making use of the classical theory of energy fluctuations, escape probability is described by a simple explicit function, the variable of which is a combination of temperature, relative permittivity, and specific heat. First our earlier calculations on the recombination of solvated electrons, produced by ionizing radiation in a number of polar liquids, are improved and then the theory is compared with the experimental results on temperature dependent electron survival by Kratz et al. [S. Kratz, J. Torres-Alcan, J. Urbanek, J. Lindner, and P. Vöhringer, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 12, 12169 (2010)]. Two adjustable parameters are needed to achieve reasonable quantitative agreement.