Accurate empirical rovibrational energies and transitions of H216O

Several significant improvements are proposed to the computational molecular spectroscopy protocol MARVEL (Measured Active Rotational-Vibrational Energy Levels) facilitating the inversion of a large set of measured rovibrational transitions to energy levels. The most important algorithmic changes include the use of groups of transitions, blocked by their estimated experimental (source segment) uncertainties, an inversion and weighted least-squares refinement procedure based on sequential addition of blocks of decreasing accuracy, the introduction of spectroscopic cycles into the refinement process, automated recalibration, synchronization of the combination difference relations to reduce residual uncertainties in the resulting dataset of empirical (MARVEL) energy levels, and improved classification of the lines and energy levels based on their accuracy and dependability. The resulting protocol, through handling a large number of measurements of similar accuracy, retains, or even improves upon, the best reported uncertainties of the spectroscopic transitions employed. To show its advantages, the extended MARVEL protocol is applied for the analysis of the complete set of highly accurate H216O transition measurements. As a result, almost 300 highly accurate energy levels of H216O are reported in the energy range of 0-6000 cm-1. Out of the 15 vibrational bands involved in accurately measured rovibrational transitions, the following three have definitely highly accurate empirical rovibrational energies of 8-10 digits of accuracy: (v1v2v3) = (0 0 0), (0 1 0), and (0 2 0), where v1, v2, and v3 stand for the symmetric stretch, bend, and antisymmetric stretch vibrational quantum numbers. The dataset of experimental rovibrational transitions and empirical rovibrational energy levels assembled during this study, both with improved uncertainties, is considerably larger and more accurate than the best previous datasets.

Demonstration of a room temperature 2.48-2.75 THz coherent spectroscopy source

We report the first demonstration of a continuous wave coherent source covering 2.48-2.75 THz, with greater than 10% instantaneous tuning bandwidth and having 1-14 μW of output power at room temperature. This source is based on a 91.8-101.8 GHz synthesizer followed by a power amplifier and three cascaded frequency triplers. It demonstrates for the first time that purely electronic solid-state sources can generate a useful amount of power in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum where lasers (solid state or gas) were previously the only available coherent sources. The bandwidth, agility, and operability of this THz source have enabled wideband, high resolution spectroscopic measurements of water, methanol, and carbon monoxide with a resolution and signal-to-noise ratio unmatched by any other existing system, providing new insight in the physics of these molecules. Furthermore, the power and optical beam quality are high enough to observe the Lamb-dip effect in water. The source frequency has an absolute accuracy better than 1 part in 10(12) and the spectrometer achieves sub-Doppler frequency resolution better than 1 part in 10(8). The harmonic purity is better than 25 dB. This source can serve as a coherent signal for absorption spectroscopy, a local oscillator for a variety of heterodyne systems and can be used as a method for precision control of more powerful but much less frequency agile quantum mechanical terahertz sources.

Molecular Mechanics (MM4) Study of Fluorinated Hydrocarbons

A molecular mechanics study of small saturated hydrocarbons (up to C-6) substituted by up to six fluorines has been carried out with the MM4 force field. A parameter set has been developed for use in the calculation of bond lengths, bond angles, torsion angles, conformational energies, barriers to rotation, dipole moments, moments of inertia, and vibrational frequencies for these compounds. The results are mostly in fair to good agreement with experiment and ab initio calculations. The high electronegativity of fluorine leads to serious geometric consequences in these compounds, but these consequences can be dealt with adequately by suitable cross-terms in the force constant matrix, and by recognizing that some of the reference bond lengths and angles (l(0), theta(0)) and the corresponding stretching and bending constant parameters (k(s), k(theta)) that are usually thought of as constants must in fact be treated as functions of the electronegativity of the substituents. Additionally, the heavy mass of the fluorine (relative to the mass of hydrogen in alkanes) leads to large values for other cross-terms that were found to be unimportant in hydrocarbons. Conformational equilibria for polyfluorinated compounds are affected by the delta-two effect well-known in carbohydrates. A few larger fluorinated and polyfluorinated alkanes, including perfluoropropane, perfluorobutane, and Teflon, have also been studied.