2025/01/14 by M. Landry, Chu-Liang Fu, Landry, Michael J. +9
Chemistry · #Atomic and Molecular Clusters (physics.atm-clus) #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #Photochemistry and Electron Transfer Studies #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Various Chemistry Research Topics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.08373
openalex publication_date 2025/01/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
It is well-known that water in both liquid and vapor phases exhibits exceptionally weak absorption of light in the visible range. Recent experiments, however, have demonstrated that at the liquid-air interface, absorption in the visible range is drastically increased. This increased absorption results in a rate of evaporation that exceeds the theoretical thermal limit by between two and five times. Curiously, the evaporation rate peaks at green wavelengths of light, while no corresponding absorptance peak has been observed. Experiments suggest that photons can cleave off clusters of water molecules at the surface, but no clear theoretical model has yet been proposed to explain how this is possible. This paper aims to present such a model and explain this surprising and important phenomenon.