PNNL

Abstract

The emergence of sub-wavenumber high-resolution broadband sum-frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy (HR-BBSFG-VS) [Velarde et al., J. Chem. Phys., 2011, 135, 241102] has offered new opportunities in obtaining and understanding the spectral lineshape and temporal effects on the surface vibrational spectroscopy. Particularly, the high accuracy in the HR-BBSFG-VS spectral lineshape measurement provides detailed information on the complex coherent vibrational dynamics through spectral measurement. Here we present a unified formalism of the theoretical and experimental approaches for obtaining the accurate lineshape of the SFG response, and then present a analysis on the higher and lower spectral resolution SFG spectra as well as their temporal effects of the cholesterol molecules at the air/water interface. With the high spectral resolution and accurate lineshape, it is shown that the parameters from the sub-wavenumber resolution SFG spectra can be used not only to understand but also to quantitatively reproduce the temporal effects in the lower resolution SFG measurement. These not only provide a unified picture in understanding both the frequency-domain and the time-domain SFG response of the complex molecular interface, but also provide novel experimental approaches that can directly measure them.