Effect of rotation on internal dynamics and phase-space structure of rare-gas trimers - art. no. 043203

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.