Thermalization of vibrational excess energy in liquid chloroform

The thermalization processes of well defined excess energy in liquid chloroform were studied on a wide range of time scales. Starting with nearly 10% vibrational population of the CH stretching vibration created by intense picosecond infrared pulses, time resolved spontaneous Raman scattering experiments were performed and analyzed yielding equilibration of the vibrational manifold within less than a nanosecond. The following slower processes were investigated by monitoring the lime dependence of thermal lensing and scattering in the excitation volume. The volume expansion (bubble formation included) was found to take several ten mu s As slowest process heat conduction revealing a typical lime constant of a few milliseconds is observed, (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.