Vibrational effects on UV/Vis laser-driven pi-electron ring currents in aromatic ring molecules

Abstract

We present the results of a theoretical study of vibrational effects on UV/Vis laser-driven p-electron ring currents in aromatic ring molecules. We consider vibrational effects on both coherent and non-coherent (single quantum state) ring currents. The coherent ring current originates from an excitation of a pair of quasi-degenerate electronic states by an ultrashort linearly polarized UV/Vis laser pulse, while the non-coherent ring current originates from by an excitation of a degenerated electronic state of an aromatic ring molecule with high symmetry by a circularly polarized electric field of a UV/Vis laser pulse. The magnitude of a generated ring current can be expressed as an average of those of the bond currents for both the coherent and non-coherent cases. We derive an analytical expression for the magnitude of the bond currents in the adiabatic approximation. Using the expression, we performed calculations of a non-coherent ring current generated in the optically allowed excited state (E-1(1U)) of benzene and the time evolution of coherent ring current of (P)-2,2-biphenol. Vibrational effects on the non-coherent ring current of benzene were found to be negligibly small. We paid particular attention to the vibrational effects induced by the torsion mode on time evolution of the coherent ring current along the bond bridging between the two aromatic rings of (P)-2,2-biphenol. By comparing the time evolution of the coherent ring current with that in the frozen-nuclear approximation, we found that inclusion of the low-frequency torsion mode brings about modulations in the beating in the ring current. The modulations in the time evolution of the coherent ring current were brought about by contribution of several pairs of the coherently excited vibronic states. Coherent vibronic ring currents generated from pairs of the coherently excited vibronic states interfere each other. The existence of the pairs originates from relatively large potential displacement of the torsion mode between the two excited states for (P)-2,2-biphenol. Temperature effects on the time-dependent coherent ring current were also investigated. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.