Vibrationally mediated photodissociation of CH3I [v1 = 1] at 277.5 nm: the vibrationally adiabatic process.

From the photofragment translational spectra of C-H symmetric stretch excited CH3I [v(1) = 1, v(2) = 0] photodissociatioin at 277.5 nm, the vibrational distribution of photofragments CH3 (v(1) = 0, v(2) = 0), (0,1), (1,0), (1,1) in the I* channel are measured to be 0.02, 0.02, 0.47, 0.25, and those of CH3 (1,0), (1,1) in the I channel are 0.04, 0.05, respectively. It shows that most of the dissociated CH3I [1,0] retain the C-H symmetric stretch vibration v(1) = 1 in the photofragments CH3, and the vibrational distribution in umbrella bending mode is not seriously affected by the original CH symmetric stretch excitation. The photodissociation of CH3I [1,0] mainly follows the vibrationally adiabatic process. The original vibrational excitation [v(1) = 1] of CH3I is quite like a spectator, and the intramolecular vibrational-energy redistribution (IVR) does not play obvious part during photodissociation.