Ed. Belega et al., Effect of rotation on internal dynamics and phase-space structure of rare-gas trimers - art. no. 043203, PHYS REV A, 6304(4), 2001, pp. 3203
The effect of total rotational angular momentum on the stochastic character
istics of the internal motion of rare-gas trimers has been studied by the m
olecular-dynamics method. Results presented for the argon trimer described
in a two-parameter phase space characterized by fixed values of the total e
nergy and angular momentum provide insight into the separation of chaotic f
rom regular motions of the system. An important feature of the phase-space
structure is that the volume filled by regular trajectories for fixed total
energy of the system is not a monotonic function of its total angular mome
ntum. The chaotic motions are characterized by a strong coupling between po
tential- and kinetic-energy contributions that is not observed for the regu
lar motions.