Photomolecular effect: Visible light interaction with air-water interface

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lv, Guangxin; Tu, Yaodong; Zhang, James H.
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-11382
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2320844121
• 发表日期: 2024-04-30
• 关键词: molecular-dynamics; solar-radiation; liquid; clouds; vapor; spectroscopy; absorption; clusters

摘要

Although water is almost transparent to visible light, we demonstrate that the air-water interface interacts strongly with visible light via what we hypothesize as the photomolecular effect. In this effect, transverse - magnetic polarized photons cleave off water clusters from the air-water interface. We use 14 different experiments to demonstrate the existence of this effect and its dependence on the wavelength, incident angle, and polarization of visible light. We further demonstrate that visible light heats up thin fogs, suggesting that this process can impact weather, climate, and the earth's water cycle and that it provides a mechanism to resolve the long - standing puzzle of larger measured clouds absorption to solar radiation than theory could predict based on bulk water optical constants. Our study suggests that the photomolecular effect should happen widely in nature, from clouds to fogs, ocean to soil surfaces, and plant transpiration and can also lead to applications in energy and clean water.