Ultrafast dichroism spectroscopy of anthracene in solution. III. Nonpolar solvation dynamics in benzyl alcohol

Results on single-wavelength transient hole burning (SW-THB) developed in paper II [J. Chem. Phys. 115, 4223 (2001)] are applied to the dichroism experiments on anthracene in benzyl alcohol reported in paper I [J. Chem. Phys. 115, 4212 (2001)]. The intermediate component of the dichroism decay is assigned to a SW-THB effect caused by nonpolar electronic solvation. The presence of a solvation component in dichroism experiments has not been demonstrated previously. The sparseness of anthracene’s electronic spectrum eliminates vibrational dynamics from the solvation measurement. Because data collection is focused on a single dimension, the viscosity dependence of the nonpolar solvation is determined with greater accuracy than in our previous two-dimensional transient hole-burning studies. The solvation time is obtained as a function of viscosity/temperature from 14.4 to 2.7 cP (1–56 °C). The times show good agreement with a viscoelastic theory of the diffusive component of nonpolar solvation. Combining the results of this paper with those of paper I allows for comparison of solvation and rotation dynamics within a single system. A correlation between the ratio of diffusive solvation and rotation times and the magnitude of the inertial rotation is suggested.