Dynamics at conical intersections in liquids and gases

Speaker:  Max Waters, Stanford

Program Description:
Conical intersections (CIs) have been well-established as topographical features responsible for driving a plethora of photophysical processes, coupling electronic and nuclear dynamics. In this contribution, three cases of CI dynamics will be discussed:

• A comparison of the cis-trans photoisomerization dynamics of gas- and liquid-phase cis-stilbene, where preserved coherence following the reaction path is observed in both gas and liquid.
• The imaging of a Jahn-Teller splitting in the 4p Rydberg series of carbon tetrachloride, where we project onto a series of well-separated cationic states, allowing the changes of each cationic state to be used to image this conical intersection.

• The ultrafast dynamics of 3d Rydberg-excited ammonia, where we vibrationally resolve an ultrafast vibrational coupling between different modes, followed by ultrafast internal conversion.