Vibrationally enhanced associative photodesorption of H2 (D2) from Ru(0001). Quantum and classical approaches

This thesis investigates the femtosecond laser induced associative photodesorption of hydrogen, H2, and deuterium, D2, from a ruthenium metal surface. One of the goals of the present thesis is to suggest, on the basis of theoretical simulations, strategies to control/enhance the photodesorption yield from Ru(0001). For this purpose, we suggest a hybrid scheme to control the reaction, where the adsorbate vibrations are initially excited by an infrared (IR) pulse, prior to the vis pulse. Both adiabatic and non-adiabatic representations for photoinduced desorption problems are employed here. The adiabatic representation is realized within the classical picture using Molecular Dynamics (MD) with electronic frictions. In a quantum mechanical description, non-adiabatic representations are employed within open-system density matrix theory. The time evolution of the desorption process is studied using a two-mode reduced dimensionality model with one vibrational coordinate and one translational coordinate of the adsorbate. The ground and excited electronic state potentials, and dipole function for the IR excitation are taken from first principles. The IR driven vibrational excitation of adsorbate modes with moderate efficiency is achieved by (modified) π-pulses or/and optimal control theory. The fluence dependence of the desorption reaction is computed by including the electronic temperature of the metal calculated from the two-temperature model. We then employed the IR+vis strategy in both models. Here, we found that vibrational excitation indeed promotes the desorption of hydrogen and deuterium. (orig.)