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Updated: Apr 26, 2026

Spatial Separation of Molecular Conformers and Clusters
Published on: January 9, 2014
Probing the structure and dynamics of molecular clusters using rotational wave packets
Gediminas Galinis1, Cephise Cacho2, Richard T Chapman2
1University of Leicester, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Rotational wave packets of the weakly bound C(2)H(2)-He complex have been created using impulsive alignment. The coherent rotational dynamics were monitored for 600 ps enabling extraction of a frequency spectrum showing multiple rotational energy levels up to J = 4. spectrum has been combined with ab initio calculations to show that the complex has a highly delocalized structure and is bound only by ca. 7 cm(-1). The experiments demonstrate how highly featured rotational spectra can be obtained from an extremely cold environment where only the lowest rotational energy states are initially populated.
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