Ultrafast Librational Relaxation of H2O in Liquid Water

High energy vibrational excitations of nitromethane in liquid water

The pathways and timescales of vibrational energy flow in nitromethane are investigated in both gas and condensed phases using classical molecular mechanics, with a particular focus on relaxation in liquid water. We monitor the flow of excess energy deposited in vibrational modes of nitromethane into the surrounding solvent. A marked energy flux anisotropy is found when nitromethane is immersed in liquid water, with a preferential flow to those water molecules in contact to the nitro group. The factors that permit such anisotropic energy relaxation are discussed, along with the potential implications on the molecule's non-equilibrium dynamics. In addition, the energy flux analysis allows us to identify the solvent motions responsible for the uptake of solute energy, confirming the crucial role of water librations. Finally, we also show that no anisotropic vibrational energy relaxation occurs when nitromethane is surrounded by argon gas.

Ultrafast Rotational and Translational Energy Relaxation in Neat Liquids

The excess energy flow pathways during rotational and translational relaxation induced by rotational or translational excitation of a single molecule of and within each of four different neat liquids (H₂O, MeOH, CCl₄, and CH₄) are studied using classical molecular dynamics simulations and energy flux analysis. For all four liquids, the relaxation processes for both types of excitation are ultrafast, but the energy flow is significantly faster for the polar, hydrogen-bonded (H-bonded) liquids H₂O and MeOH. Whereas the majority of the initial excess energy is transferred into hindered rotations (librations) for rotational excitation in the H-bonded liquids, an almost equal efficiency for transfer to translational and rotational motions is observed in the nonpolar, non-H-bonded liquids CCl₄ and CH₄. For translational excitation, transfer to translational motions dominates for all liquids. In general, the energy flows are quite local; i.e., more than 70% of the energy flows directly to the first solvent shell molecules, reaching almost 100% for CCl₄ and CH₄. Finally, the determined validity of linear response theory for these nonequilibrium relaxation processes is quite solvent-dependent, with the deviation from linear response most marked for rotational excitation and for the nonpolar liquids.

Solvation Dynamics in Water. 4. On the Initial Regime of Solvation Relaxation

It is shown, by means of numerical and analytic work, that initial molecular momenta play little significant role in the initial fast solvation relaxation that follows electronic excitation of, and charge creation for, a standard model system of a solute in water. Instead, the nonequilibrium dynamics are predominantly described by noninertial "steering" by the torques directly generated by the newly created charge distribution. It is this process that largely overcomes inertia and drives the relaxation dynamics on a time scale of a few tens of femtoseconds in the key initial regime of the dynamics. These results are discussed in the context of commonly employed descriptions such as inertial, Gaussian, and underdamped dynamical behavior.

Discovering a rotational barrier within a charge-transfer state of a photoexcited chromophore in solution

Methylation occurs in a myriad of systems with protective and regulatory functions. 8-methoxypyrene-1,3,6-trisulfonate (MPTS), a methoxy derivative of a photoacid, serves as a model system to study effects of methylation on the excited state potential energy landscape. A suite of spectroscopic techniques including transient absorption, wavelength-tunable femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS), and fluorescence quantum yield measurements via steady-state electronic spectroscopy reveal the energy dissipation pathways of MPTS following photoexcitation. Various solvents enable a systematic characterization of the H-bonding interaction, viscosity, and dynamic solvation that influence the ensuing relaxation pathways. The formation of a charge-transfer state out of the Franck-Condon region occurs on the femtosecond-to-picosecond solvation timescale before encountering a rotational barrier. The rotational relaxation correlates with the H-bond donating strength of solvent, while the rotational time constant lengthens as solvent viscosity increases. Time-resolved excited-state FSRS, aided by quantum calculations, provides crucial structural dynamics knowledge and reveals the sulfonate groups playing a dominant role during solvation. Several prominent vibrational motions of the pyrene ring backbone help maneuver the population toward the more fluorescent state. These ultrafast correlated electronic and nuclear motions ultimately govern the fate of the photoexcited chromophore in solution. Overall, MPTS in water displays the highest probability to fluoresce, while the aprotic and more viscous dimethyl sulfoxide enhances the nonradiative pathways. These mechanistic insights may apply robustly to other photoexcited chromophores that do not undergo excited-state proton transfer or remain trapped in a broad electronic state and also provide design principles to control molecular optical responses with site-specific atomic substitution.

Effects of Hydrogen Bonding on the Rotational Dynamics of Water-Like Molecules in Liquids: Insights from Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Rotational motion of molecules plays an important role in determining NMR spin relaxation properties of liquids. The textbook theory of NMR spin relaxation predominantly uses the assumption that the reorientational dynamics of molecules is described by a continuous time rotational diffusion random walk with a single rotational diffusion coefficient. Previously we and others have shown that reorientation of water molecules on the timescales of picoseconds is not consistent with the Debye rotational-diffusion model. In particular, multiple timescales of molecular reorientation were observed in liquid water. This was attributed to the hydrogen bonding network in water and the consequent presence of collective rearrangements of the molecular network. In order to better understand the origins of the complex reorientational behaviour of water molecules, we carried out molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of a liquid that has a similar molecular geometry to water but does not form hydrogen bonds: hydrogen sulfide. These simulations were carried out at T=208K and p=1 atm (~5K below the boiling point). Ensemble-averaged Legendre polynomial functions of hydrogen sulfide exhibited a Gaussian decay on the sub-picosecond timescale but, unlike water, did not exhibit oscillatory behaviour. We attribute these differences to hydrogen sulfide’s absence of hydrogen bonding.

Entropic barriers in the kinetics of aqueous proton transfer

Aqueous proton transport is uniquely rapid among aqueous processes, mediated by fluctuating hydrogen bond reorganization in liquid water. In a process known as Grotthuss diffusion, the excess charge diffuses primarily by sequential proton transfers between water molecules rather than standard Brownian motion, which explains the anomalously high electrical conductivity of acidic solutions. Employing ultrafast IR spectroscopy, we use the orientational anisotropy decay of the bending vibrations of the hydrated proton complex to study the picosecond aqueous proton transfer kinetics as a function of temperature, concentration, and counterion. We find that the orientational anisotropy decay exhibits Arrhenius behavior, with an apparent activation energy of 2.4 kcal/mol in 1M and 2M HCl. Interestingly, acidic solutions at high concentration with longer proton transfer time scales display corresponding decreases in activation energy. We interpret this counterintuitive trend by considering the entropic and enthalpic contributions to the activation free energy for proton transfer. Halide counteranions at high concentrations impose entropic barriers to proton transfer in the form of constraints on the solution's collective H-bond fluctuations and obstruction of potential proton transfer pathways. The corresponding proton transfer barrier decreases due to weaker water-halide H-bonds in close proximity to the excess proton, but the entropic effects dominate and result in a net reduction in the proton transfer rate. We estimate the activation free energy for proton transfer as ∼1.0 kcal/mol at 280 K.

Mixed Quantum/Classical Method for Nonadiabatic Quantum Dynamics in Explicit Solvent Models: The ππ*/nπ* Decay of Thymine in Water as a Test Case

We present a novel mixed quantum classical dynamical method to include solvent effects on internal conversion (IC) processes. All the solute degrees of freedom are represented by a wavepacket moving according to nonadiabatic quantum dynamics, while the motion of an explicit solvent model is described by an ensemble of classical trajectories. The mutual coupling of the solute and solvent dynamics is included within a mean-field framework and the quantum and classical equations of motions are solved simultaneously. As a test case we apply our method to the ultrafast ππ* → nπ* decay of thymine in water. Solvent dynamical response modifies IC yield already on the 50 fs time scale. This effect is due to water librational motions that stabilize the most populated state. Pure static disorder, that is, the existence of different solvent configurations when photoexcitation takes place, also has a remarkable impact on the dynamics.

Water Dynamics in the Hydration Shells of Biomolecules

The structure and function of biomolecules are strongly influenced by their hydration shells. Structural fluctuations and molecular excitations of hydrating water molecules cover a broad range in space and time, from individual water molecules to larger pools and from femtosecond to microsecond time scales. Recent progress in theory and molecular dynamics simulations as well as in ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy has led to new and detailed insight into fluctuations of water structure, elementary water motions, electric fields at hydrated biointerfaces, and processes of vibrational relaxation and energy dissipation. Here, we review recent advances in both theory and experiment, focusing on hydrated DNA, proteins, and phospholipids, and compare dynamics in the hydration shells to bulk water.

Coherent field transients below 15 THz from phase-matched difference frequency generation in 4H-SiC

We experimentally demonstrate tunable, phase-matched difference frequency generation covering the spectral region below 15 THz using 4H-SiC as a nonlinear crystal. This material combines a non-centrosymmetric lattice and strong birefringence with broadband transparency at low optical frequencies. Thorough refractive index measurements in the terahertz spectral range allow us to calculate phase-matching conditions for any near-infrared pump laser source. 4H-SiC is also exploited as a detector crystal for electro-optic sampling. The results allow us to estimate the effective second-order nonlinear coefficient.

Reaction Path Averaging: Characterizing the Structural Response of the DNA Double Helix to Electron Transfer

A polarizable environment, prominently the solvent, responds to electronic changes in biomolecules rapidly. The knowledge of conformational relaxation of the biomolecule itself, however, may be scarce or missing. In this work, we describe in detail the structural changes in DNA undergoing electron transfer between two adjacent nucleobases. We employ an approach based on averaging of tens to hundreds of thousands of nonequilibrium trajectories generated with molecular dynamics simulation, and a reduction of dimensionality suitable for DNA. We show that the conformational response of the DNA proceeds along a single collective coordinate that represents the relative orientation of two consecutive base pairs, namely, a combination of helical parameters shift and tilt. The structure of DNA relaxes on time scales reaching nanoseconds, contributing marginally to the relaxation of energies, which is dominated by the modes of motion of the aqueous solvent. The concept of reaction path averaging (RPA), conveniently exploited in this context, makes it possible to filter out any undesirable noise from the nonequilibrium data, and is applicable to any chemical process in general.

Solvation Dynamics in Liquid Water. III. Energy Fluxes and Structural Changes

In previous installments it has been shown how a detailed analysis of energy fluxes induced by electronic excitation of a solute can provide a quantitative understanding of the dominant molecular energy flow channels characterizing solvation-and in particular, hydration- relaxation dynamics. Here this work and power approach is complemented with a detailed characterization of the changes induced by such energy fluxes. We first examine the water solvent's spatial and orientational distributions and the assorted energy fluxes in the various hydration shells of the solute to provide a molecular picture of the relaxation. The latter analysis is also used to address the issue of a possible "inverse snowball" effect, an ansatz concerning the time scales of the different hydration shells to reach equilibrium. We then establish a link between the instantaneous torque, exerted on the water solvent neighbors' principal rotational axes immediately after excitation and the final energy transferred into those librational motions, which are the dominant short-time energy receptor.

Experimentally probing the libration of interfacial water: the rotational potential of water is stiffer at the air/water interface than in bulk liquid

Most properties of liquid water are determined by its hydrogen-bond network. Because forming an aqueous interface requires termination of this network, one might expect the molecular level properties of interfacial water to markedly differ from water in bulk. Intriguingly, much prior experimental and theoretical work has found that, from the perspective of their time-averaged structure and picosecond structural dynamics, hydrogen-bonded OH groups at an air/water interface behave the same as hydrogen-bonded OH groups in bulk liquid water. Here we report the first experimental observation of interfacial water's libration (i.e. frustrated rotation) using the laser-based technique vibrational sum frequency spectroscopy. We find this mode has a frequency of 834 cm(-1), ≈165 cm(-1) higher than in bulk liquid water at the same temperature and similar to bulk ice. Because libration frequency is proportional to the stiffness of water's rotational potential, this increase suggests that one effect of terminating bulk water's hydrogen bonding network at the air/water interface is retarding rotation of water around intact hydrogen bonds. Because in bulk liquid water the libration plays a key role in stabilizing reaction intermediates and dissipating excess vibrational energy, we expect the ability to probe this mode in interfacial water to open new perspectives on the kinetics of heterogeneous reactions at aqueous interfaces.

Subpicosecond energy transfer from a highly intense THz pulse to water: A computational study based on the TIP4P/2005 rigid-water-molecule model

The dynamics of ultrafast energy transfer to water clusters and to bulk water by a highly intense, subcycle THz pulse of duration ≈150 fs is investigated in the context of force-field molecular dynamics simulations. We focus our attention on the mechanisms by which rotational and translational degrees of freedom of the water monomers gain energy from these subcycle pulses with an electric field amplitude of up to about 0.6 V/Å. It has been recently shown that pulses with these characteristics can be generated in the laboratory [C. Vicario, B. Monoszlai, and C. P. Hauri, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 213901 (2014)]. Through their permanent dipole moment, water molecules are acted upon by the electric field and forced off their preferred hydrogen-bond network conformation. This immediately sets them in motion with respect to one another as energy quickly transfers to their relative center of mass displacements. We find that, in the bulk, the operation of these mechanisms is strongly dependent on the initial temperature and density of the system. In low density systems, the equilibration between rotational and translational modes is slow due to the lack of collisions between monomers. As the initial density of the system approaches 1 g/cm(3), equilibration between rotational and translational modes after the pulse becomes more efficient. In turn, low temperatures hinder the direct energy transfer from the pulse to rotational motion owing to the resulting stiffness of the hydrogen bond network. For small clusters of just a few water molecules we find that fragmentation due to the interaction with the pulse is faster than equilibration between rotations and translations, meaning that the latter remain colder than the former after the pulse. In contrast, clusters with more than a few tens of water molecules already display energy gain dynamics similar to water in condensed phases owing to inertial confinement of the internal water molecules by the outer shells. In these cases, a complete equilibration becomes possible.

Reaction Mechanism for Direct Proton Transfer from Carbonic Acid to a Strong Base in Aqueous Solution II: Solvent Coordinate-Dependent Reaction Path

The protonation of methylamine base CH3NH2 by carbonic acid H2CO3 within a hydrogen (H)-bonded complex in aqueous solution was studied via Car-Parrinello dynamics in the preceding paper (Daschakraborty, S.; Kiefer, P. M.; Miller, Y.; Motro, Y.; Pines, D.; Pines, E.; Hynes, J. T. J. Phys. Chem. B 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.5b12742). Here some important further details of the reaction path are presented, with specific emphasis on the water solvent's role. The overall reaction is barrierless and very rapid, on an ∼100 fs time scale, with the proton transfer (PT) event itself being very sudden (<10 fs). This transfer is preceded by the acid-base H-bond's compression, while the water solvent changes little until the actual PT occurrence; this results from the very strong driving force for the reaction, as indicated by the very favorable acid-protonated base ΔpKa difference. Further solvent rearrangement follows immediately the sudden PT's production of an incipient contact ion pair, stabilizing it by establishment of equilibrium solvation. The solvent water's short time scale ∼120 fs response to the incipient ion pair formation is primarily associated with librational modes and H-bond compression of water molecules around the carboxylate anion and the protonated base. This is consistent with this stabilization involving significant increase in H-bonding of hydration shell waters to the negatively charged carboxylate group oxygens' (especially the former H2CO3 donor oxygen) and the nitrogen of the positively charged protonated base's NH3(+).

Reaction Mechanism for Direct Proton Transfer from Carbonic Acid to a Strong Base in Aqueous Solution I: Acid and Base Coordinate and Charge Dynamics

Protonation by carbonic acid H2CO3 of the strong base methylamine CH3NH2 in a neutral contact pair in aqueous solution is followed via Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics simulations. Proton transfer (PT) occurs to form an aqueous solvent-stabilized contact ion pair within 100 fs, a fast time scale associated with the compression of the acid-base hydrogen-bond (H-bond), a key reaction coordinate. This rapid barrierless PT is consistent with the carbonic acid-protonated base pKa difference that considerably favors the PT, and supports the view of intact carbonic acid as potentially important proton donor in assorted biological and environmental contexts. The charge redistribution within the H-bonded complex during PT supports a Mulliken picture of charge transfer from the nitrogen base to carbonic acid without altering the transferring hydrogen's charge from approximately midway between that of a hydrogen atom and that of a proton.

Fluctuations of local electric field and dipole moments in water between metal walls

We examine the thermal fluctuations of the local electric field Ek (loc) and the dipole moment μk in liquid water at T = 298 K between metal walls in electric field applied in the perpendicular direction. We use analytic theory and molecular dynamics simulation. In this situation, there is a global electrostatic coupling between the surface charges on the walls and the polarization in the bulk. Then, the correlation function of the polarization density pz(r) along the applied field contains a homogeneous part inversely proportional to the cell volume V. Accounting for the long-range dipolar interaction, we derive the Kirkwood-Fröhlich formula for the polarization fluctuations when the specimen volume v is much smaller than V. However, for not small v/V, the homogeneous part comes into play in dielectric relations. We also calculate the distribution of Ek (loc) in applied field. As a unique feature of water, its magnitude |Ek (loc)| obeys a Gaussian distribution with a large mean value E0 ≅ 17 V/nm, which arises mainly from the surrounding hydrogen-bonded molecules. Since |μk|E0 ∼ 30kBT, μk becomes mostly parallel to Ek (loc). As a result, the orientation distributions of these two vectors nearly coincide, assuming the classical exponential form. In dynamics, the component of μk(t) parallel to Ek (loc)(t) changes on the time scale of the hydrogen bonds ∼5 ps, while its smaller perpendicular component undergoes librational motions on time scales of 0.01 ps.

Elucidating low-frequency vibrational dynamics in calcite and water with time-resolved third-harmonic generation spectroscopy

Coherent low-frequency vibrational dynamics in condensed phase from crystal, water, to aqueous electrolyte are elucidated by time-resolved third-harmonic-generation (TRTHG) spectroscopy.