Probing the structure and dynamics of molecular clusters using rotational wavepackets

Rotational wave packets of the weakly bound C2H2-He complex have been created using impulsive alignment. The coherent rotational dynamics were monitored for 600 ps enabling extraction of a frequency spectrum showing multiple rotational energy levels up to J = 4. spectrum has been combined with ab initio calculations to show that the complex has a highly delocalized structure and is bound only by ca. 7 cm−1. The experiments demonstrate how highly featured rotational spectra can be obtained from an extremely cold environment where only the lowest rotational energy states are initially populated.