Anisotropic reorientational relaxation of biphenyl: Transient grating optical Kerr effect measurements

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Abstract
Subpicosecond transient grating optical Kerr effect measurements have been used to evaluate the reorientation of biphenyl molecules in neat biphenyl and n-heptane solutions. Besides an ultrafast (100 fs time scale) component associated with librational damping/dephasing, two reorientational relaxation components are observed. The slow reorientation is due to rotation around the short axes of the molecule (tumbling motion), the fast reorientation is associated with internal rotation around the central C–C bond and/or rotation of the whole molecule around its long axis (spinning motion). Whereas the tumbling motion has been observed in earlier depolarized light scattering data, the time resolved Kerr data presented here are the first ones to reveal the dynamics of the fast reorientation component and the ultrafast librational dynamics. It is shown that the diffusive reorientational relaxation must be coupled to the ultrafast librational dynamics, and implications of this coupling are pointed out.

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