Lowest energy excited singlet states of isomers of alkyl substituted hexatrienes

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Abstract
Vibrationally resolved S0→S1 excitation spectra for the alkyl substituted linear polyenes heptatriene, octatriene, and decatriene seeded into a supersonic He expansion have been measured by resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization spectroscopy. As is the case for the parent compound hexatriene, the lowest energy excited singlet state in all of these molecules is the 2 1Ag state. The measurement of S0→S1 excitation spectra of three of the four double bond isomers of heptatriene gives a detailed picture of the dependence of the electronic structure of the 2 1Ag state on molecular conformation. The three isomers for which spectra are presented have the cis configuration at either the central or the alkyl substituted double bond, or both. For the case of the mono cis species with the cis configuration at the alkyl substituted double bond the spectra show the presence of two single bond conformers. Because of the increased number of distinguishable isomers and conformers for octatriene and decatriene we were unable to unambiguously separate the observed spectra of these molecules into contributions from single specific molecular conformations. However, the increased excitation intensity in the low frequency region relative to that in the C–C and C=C stretching region for octatriene and decatriene as compared to heptatriene suggests that vibrational relaxation is enhanced in the more complex molecules. In the case of unsubstituted hexatriene, previously reported spectra show that the 2 1Ag state has lower symmetry than does the ground state (most likely due to nonplanarity at the terminal carbon atoms). There is no evidence for an analogous distortion in the excitation spectra measured for the alkyl substituted hexatrienes.