Dynamics of Highly Excited States in Chemistry: An Overview

This article provides an overview of chemical research that is concerned with the dynamics of highly excited states of molecules. Four broad topics are discussed, including (1) highly excited bound vibrational states of polyatomic molecules, (2) unimolecular decay of highly excited molecules, (3) collisional relaxation of highly excited polyatomic molecules, and (4) bimolecular reactions involving vibrationally excited molecules. For each topic, we present an overview of current experimental and theoretical research being done, along with a brief discussion of selected applications.