Dynamics of water trimer in femtosecond laser pulses

Abstract

With the help of the time-dependent local-density approximation (TDLDA) coupled non-adiabatically to molecular dynamics (MD), we studied both the static properties and irradiation dynamics of water trimer subject to the short and intense femtosecond laser field. It is shown that the optimized geometry and the optical absorption strength of the water trimer accord well with results in literature. Three typical possible irradiated scenarios of water trimer which are “normal oscillation”, “dissociation and formation” and “pure OH dissociation” are exhibited by investigating the ionization and the level depletion related to electrons as well as the OH bonds, proton-transfer, the intermolecular distance and the kinetic energy connected with ions. In three scenarios, the behaviors of water trimer can be attributed to the sequential combination of responses of the electrons emission, the proton-transfer, OH vibration and rotation, OH dissociation and hydroxyl formation, respectively. The relevant time scales of the first proton-transfer and OH dissociation are identified as 13 fs and 10–20 fs, respectively. The study of kinetic energies of ions show that the kinetic energies of the remaining ions are all below 4.5 eV and outgoing hydrogen ions carry a kinetic energy about 5–12 eV. Furthermore, it is found that in the tunneling ionization situations the depletion is fairly shared between the various levels except the most deep occupied electronic level while in the multiphotonic ionization case the electron loss comes from all single-electron levels and the HOMO level contributes the most.