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Vibrational Predissociation of the HCl-(H2O)3 Tetramer
Kristen Zuraski1, Daniel Kwasniewski1, Amit K Samanta1
1Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California , Los Angeles, California 90089-0482, United States.
Abstract:
The vibrational predissociation of the HCl-(H2O)3 tetramer, the largest HCl-(H2O)n cluster for which HCl is not predicted to be ionized, is reported. This work focuses on the predissociation pathway giving rise to H2O + HCl-(H2O)2 following IR laser excitation of the H-bonded OH stretch fundamental. H2O fragments are monitored state selectively by 2 + 1 resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) combined with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS). Velocity map images of H2O in selected rotational levels are used to determine translational energy distributions from which the internal energy distributions in the pair-correlated cofragments are derived. From the maximum translational energy release, the bond dissociation energy, D0 = 2400 ± 100 cm-1, is determined for the investigated channel. The energy distributions in the fragments are broad, encompassing the entire range of allowed states. The importance of cooperative (nonpairwise) interactions is discussed.
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