Second-Order Vibrational Lineshapes from the Air/Water Interface

We explore by means of modeling how absorptive–dispersive mixing between the second- and third-order terms modifies the imaginary χtotal(2) responses from air/water interfaces under conditions of varying charge densities and ionic strength. To do so, we use published Im(χ(2)) and χ(3) spectra of the neat air/water interface that were obtained either from computations or experiments. We find that the χtotal(2) spectral lineshapes corresponding to experimentally measured spectra contain significant contributions from both interfacial χ(2) and bulk χ(3) terms at interfacial charge densities equivalent to less than 0.005% of a monolayer of water molecules, especially in the 3100 to 3300 cm–1 frequency region. Additionally, the role of short-range static dipole potentials is examined under conditions mimicking brine. Our results indicate that surface potentials, if indeed present at the air/water interface, manifest themselves spectroscopically in the tightly bonded H-bond network observable in the 3200 cm–1 f...