In this paper we give a full account of the work presented in
earlier communications [Lienau et al. Chem.
Phys. Lett.
1993, 213, 289; 1994,
218
, 224; J. Chim. Phys.
1995, 92
, 566]. With femtosecond
time resolution,
studies are presented of the dynamics in real time of an elementary
chemical reaction, the dissociation and
recombination of iodine in supercritical rare-gas solvents, in the
gas-to-liquid transition region. Through
pressure variation, the properties of the solvent, helium, neon, argon,
or krypton, are changed from those of
an essentially ideal gas at low densities to those of a liquidlike
fluid at pressures of several thousand bar. Of
particular interest here are (i) the impact of solute−solvent
interactions on the coherence of the wave packet
nuclear motion, (ii) the collision-induced predissociation of the B
state, and (iii) the geminate recombination
of the atomic fragments and the subsequent vibrational energy
relaxation within the A/A‘ states. In helium
and neon, the coherence of the vibrational motion persists for many
picoseconds, even at pressures of 2000
bar. For pressures between 100 and 2000 bar of helium and neon,
the dephasing rate is only weakly affected
by the solvent density. In all solvents, the solvent-induced
predissociation rate increases nearly linearly with
solvent density. In argon at 2500 bar, the predissociation rate
reaches 1.05 ps-1. Relative
geminate
recombination yields for the formation of new A/A‘ state iodine
molecules and the time scale for the geminate
recombination and the subsequent A/A‘ state vibrational relaxation
dynamics are also studied. The solvation
and chemical dynamics are examined, using simple analytical models, in
relation to the solvent density and
polarizability. With the help of molecular dynamics, detailed in
the accompanying paper, we present a
microscopic picture of the elementary processes under the free and
solvation conditions encompassing the
different density regimes in the gas-to-liquid transition
region.