Spin current in chemical reactions

Development in attosecond technologies has been realizing real-time control of electronic dynamics. As a useful means for real-time monitoring of radical bond-rearrangement reactions, we introduce spin flux to track the dynamics of spin density in them. As an illustrative example, we show the spin flux in the course of the basic radical reaction H. + H₂. It is demonstrated that spin flux induces spin-polarization in the molecular target (H2) to weaken the covalent bond, thus leading to possible bond cleavage. The mechanism shown here is in harmony with the three-stage mechanism in radical reactions by Nagase et al.