Journal
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY LETTERS
Volume 13, Issue 32, Pages 7462-7468Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c01872
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Julia Jacobi Foundation
- European Research Council [616305]
- European Research Council (ERC) [616305] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In this study, femtosecond elastic second harmonic scattering (fs-ESHS) and molecular dynamics simulations were used to reveal that liquid water is a nonuniform liquid with enhanced nanoscale polarizabilities around transient voids. In contrast, the isotropic liquid did not show such nonuniformity.
Water is the matrix of life and serves as a solvent for numerous physical and chemical processes. The origins of the nature of inhomogeneities that exist in liquid water and the time scales over which they occur remains an open question. Here, we report femtosecond elastic second harmonic scattering (fs-ESHS) of liquid water in comparison to an isotropic liquid (CCl4) and show that water is indeed a nonuniform liquid. The coherent fs-ESHS intensity was interpreted, using molecular dynamics simulations, as arising from charge density fluctuations with enhanced nanoscale polarizabilities around transient voids having an average lifetime of 300 fs. Although voids were also present in CCl4, they were not characterized by hydrogen bond defects and did not show strong polarizability fluctuations, leading to fs-ESHS of an isotropic liquid. The voids increased in number at higher temperatures above room temperature, in agreement with the fs-ESHS results.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available