Upon warming, this product undergoes an elimination of arylsulfinic acid to give an unstable diazene as a reactive intermediate.
A radical process then promptly occurs with loss of dinitrogen to give the final alkyl product.
[4] The alkyl-radical intermediate can instead undergo an intramolecular reaction with various other suitably-positioned functional groups within the molecule, such as alkenes or cyclopropanes, leading to alternate products.
[1] If the diazene intermediate is able to undergo a sigmatropic rearrangement, this process occurs in preference to the simple radical reduction to give a hydrocarbon with a transposed π bond.
[1] Likewise, the benzylic alcohol 1-naphthylmethanol rearranges to give a methylene-cyclohexyl product with loss of aromaticity.