VIBRATIONAL-ENERGY MIGRATION ALONG HYDROCARBON CHAINS - A MODEL STUDY

The decay of an anharmonic bond coupled to a chain of eight harmonic bonds is studied numerically by use of a Lanczos procedure. The calculations show that the excitation moves coherently along the chain for at least 500 fs. The above results are used to comment on the interpretation of the chemical activations experiments on 1-decene by Rabinovitch and co-workers and to confirm (qualitatively) their hypothesis of sequential motion of the excitation along the chain. © 1990 American Chemical Society.