Photoinduced nucleation in supersaturated mercury vapor

Abstract

Photoinduced nucleation of mercury vapor is studied experimentally in an upward thermal diffusion cloud chamber. The rate of nucleation is greatly increased when the supersaturated vapor is illuminated with light absorbed by the vapor molecules. In analogy to ion-induced nucleation the photoinduced nucleation can be explained as a general effect for all condensing atoms or molecules forming long living electronically excited states.

Wetting under Electromagnetic Resonance Irradiation

“…Вони можуть привести до змiни макро-скопiчних рiвноважних властивостей системи на-вiть при незначнiй концентрацiї збуджених атомiв [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Можна також вказати на ряд експеримен-тальних дослiджень, якi стосуються плинiв в умо-вах резонансного опромiнення [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

Light-induced nucleation and optical absorption in cesium vapor

“…The coincidence of line positions between the two spectra is obvious at 348, 361, and 388 nm but the intensities behave quite differently. This might lead to the conclusion that at Ͼ340 nm the mechanism of light-induced nucleation is similar to that in mercury, 13 namely, that the nucleation centers are produced by optical excitation of cesium atoms and not by their ionization.…”

“…Recently this question was definitely answered for supersaturated mercury vapors. 13,14 It could be shown that optical excitations of resonant transitions of mercury atoms lead to the so-called photoinduced nucleation. It has to be emphasized that the optical excitation and not the ionization of vapor particles lead to the light-induced nucleation in the case of mercury.…”

Theoretical potential energy surfaces for excited mercury trimers

“…Turkevich and Cohen [5] raised the possibility of excimer formation in dense mercury vapor. Uchtmann et al [6] showed that creation of excimers in supersaturated mercury vapor by photo-illumintation gives rise to enhancement of nucleation rates.…”