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Published 2001 | public
Book Section - Chapter

Femtochemistry: Recent Progress in Studies of Dynamics and Control of Reactions and Their Transition States

Abstract

This Centennial Issue of The Journal of Physical Chemistry marks not only its achievements since birth in 1896 but also an era of great scientific contributions to the field of chemical dynamics. Pioneering work in the studies of molecular reaction dynamics, which continued over a century, led to new methods of experimentation and to new concepts. Letokhov [1] has identified "three waves" in the development of molecular dynamics, depending on the time scale. In this account we focus on the third wave characterized by femtosecond time resolution. Chemistry occurring on this time scale, femtochemistry, is microscopic, on the length scale of a bond, allowing us to address the nature of transition states and their control, a subject also started in the first part of this century.

Additional Information

© 2001 Springer. Revised and reprinted with permission from J. Chem. Phys. 1996, 100, 12701. This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. We have received two referee reports for this article, and wish to thank both referees for their very thorough reading of the manuscript and for the helpful suggestions. The work presented in this review was the result of the dedicated efforts by members of the Caltech group, past and present. They made possible the story told here, and I hope they will find it as exciting as their research in Femtoland!

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023