Abstract:
Selectivity is an important phenomenon in chemical reaction dynamics. This can
be quantified by the branching ratio of the trajectories that visit one or the other well to the
total number of trajectories in a system with a potential with two sequential index-1 saddles
and two wells (top well and bottom well). In our case, the relative branching ratio is 1:1 because
of the symmetry of our potential energy surface. The mechanisms of transport and the behavior
of the trajectories in this kind of systems have been studied recently. In this paper we study
the time evolution after the selectivity as energy varies using periodic orbit dividing surfaces.
We investigate what happens after the first visit of a trajectory to the region of the top or the
bottom well for different values of energy. We answer the natural question: What is the destiny
of these trajectories?
Keywords:phase space structure, dividing surfaces, chemical physics, periodic orbits, homoclinic
and heteroclinic orbits.
References