Intramolecular vibrational energy transfer in mixtures of anthraquinone with foreign gases

Properties of collision transfer of vibrational energy in the vibrational quasi-continuum of mixed singlet-triplet levels of anthraquinone are studied by the method of time-resolved delayed fluorescence. The two-exponential fluorescence decay is analyzed in the kinetic approximation. It is shown that dependences of the intensities and decay rates of the fast and slow components on pressure can be used for estimating the rates of the establishment of the vibrational (V-V) and thermal (V-T) equilibrium. The efficiency β and the average energy 〈ΔE〉 transferred in collisions are estimated for these processes. It is found that the V-V process is characterized by high values of β, which, however, are lower in the quasi-continuum of mixed singlet-triplet states than the gas-kinetic values (β < 0.2). The transformation of the vibrational energy to the translational energy occurs with the low efficiency (10−2 > β > 10−5). The average energy 〈ΔE〉 transferred during a collision in the V-V process is comparable with the energy predicted by the statistical theory of ergodic transfer. The correlation between experimental and theoretical values improves when the time resolution of the experiment is sufficient for the separation of the V-V and V-T processes.