Temperature dependence of the hydrated electron's excited-state relaxation. I. Simulation predictions of resonance Raman and pump-probe transient absorption spectra of cavity and non-cavity models

We use one-electron non-adiabatic mixed quantum/classical simulations to explore the temperature dependence of both the ground-state structure and the excited-state relaxation dynamics of the hydrated electron. We compare the results for both the traditional cavity picture and a more recent non-cavity model of the hydrated electron and make definite predictions for distinguishing between the different possible structural models in future experiments. We find that the traditional cavity model shows no temperature-dependent change in structure at constant density, leading to a predicted resonance Raman spectrum that is essentially temperature-independent. In contrast, the non-cavity model predicts a blue-shift in the hydrated electron's resonance Raman O-H stretch with increasing temperature. The lack of a temperature-dependent ground-state structural change of the cavity model also leads to a prediction of little change with temperature of both the excited-state lifetime and hot ground-state cooling time of the hydrated electron following photoexcitation. This is in sharp contrast to the predictions of the non-cavity model, where both the excited-state lifetime and hot ground-state cooling time are expected to decrease significantly with increasing temperature. These simulation-based predictions should be directly testable by the results of future time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy experiments. Finally, the temperature-dependent differences in predicted excited-state lifetime and hot ground-state cooling time of the two models also lead to different predicted pump-probe transient absorption spectroscopy of the hydrated electron as a function of temperature. We perform such experiments and describe them in Paper II [E. P. Farr et al., J. Chem. Phys. 147, 074504 (2017)], and find changes in the excited-state lifetime and hot ground-state cooling time with temperature that match well with the predictions of the non-cavity model. In particular, the experiments reveal stimulated emission from the excited state with an amplitude and lifetime that decreases with increasing temperature, a result in contrast to the lack of stimulated emission predicted by the cavity model but in good agreement with the non-cavity model. Overall, until ab initio calculations describing the non-adiabatic excited-state dynamics of an excess electron with hundreds of water molecules at a variety of temperatures become computationally feasible, the simulations presented here provide a definitive route for connecting the predictions of cavity and non-cavity models of the hydrated electron with future experiments. Published by AIP Publishing.