Inverse Optically-Induced Ring Currents in Ring-Shaped Molecules.

Permanent electronic ring currents are supported within manifolds of Γ degenerate excited electronic states as = ± excitations. In [ 2021, 3, L042003] we showed the existence of inverse-current manifolds, where the direction of the electronic ring current in each degenerate state is opposite to the circular polarization of the generating light fields. This vibronic effect is caused by the exchange of orbital angular momentum between the electrons and the vibrational modes with the required symmetry.

On the generation of electronic ring currents under vibronic coupling effects.

We study the generation of electronic ring currents in the presence of nonadiabatic coupling using circularly polarized light. For this, we introduce a solvable model consisting of an electron and a nucleus rotating around a common center and subject to their mutual Coulomb interaction. The simplicity of the model brings to the forefront the non-trivial properties of electronic ring currents in the presence of coupling to the nuclear coordinates and enables the characterization of various limiting situations transparently.