Affiliations: Faculty of Chemistry, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland | Department of Chemistry, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland | NanoScience Center, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
Note: [] Corresponding author: Jan Lundell, Department of Chemistry, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40014 Jyväskylä, Finland. Tel.: +358 40 7445270; Fax: +358 14 2602501; E-mail: jan.c.lundell@jyu.fi
Abstract: High-overtone induced chemistry of glyoxylic acid isolated in a low-temperature argon matrix was investigated using Raman spectroscopy. The Raman spectra of two most stable conformers of glyoxylic acid are presented. Upon excitation in high overtone vibrational bands by 532 nm irradiation of the lowest energy conformer most abundant in neat deposited sample, the isomerization of glyoxylic acid was observed. The process most plausible proceeds via absorption into the fifth vibrational overtone state of the OH group or its combination with the torsional vibrational transition. The assignment of the fundamental vibrational spectra was assisted by quantum chemical harmonic and anharmonic vibrational calculations.