Authors Referees APS Members |
January 2008, to be published in Physical Review A
Decoherence of molecular vibrational wave packets: Oscillatory decay of
purity
We study vibrational wave packet dynamics on realistic surfaces of diatomic molecules and focus on the loss of coherence induced by ro-vibrational coupling at finite temperature $T$. Expected revivals of the wave packet depend sensitively on the coherence between the vibrational states and their suppression indicates decoherence. In order to investigate this loss of vibrational coherence more quantitatively, we focus on purity decay and observe, apart from an overall decay, a remarkable oscillatory behavior of purity on the vibrational time scale. We present fully quantum mechanical calculations of purity decay and the signal measured in a typical femto-second pump-probe experiment. © 2008 The American Physical Society.
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