Brute force orientation and the two-dimensional oscillator

✍ Scribed by J. Bulthuis; J. van Leuken; F. van Amerom; S. Stolte

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 758 KB
• Volume: 222
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0009-2614
• DOI: 10.1016/0009-2614(94)87078-0

✦ Synopsis

It has been shown by Loesch and Remscheid, and by Friedrich and Hershbach, that applying a strong, homogeneous electric field is a versatile method for orienting polar molecules in a molecular beam. It is convenient to expand the orientation distribution function in Legendre polynomials. The Legendre moments can be calculated from the expansion of the wavefunctions in free-rotor functions, with different J, by carrying out the appropriate integrations. Here, we use an alternative method based on a Clebsch-Gordan expansion, by which explicit integration is avoided. Early quantum-mechanical perturbation treatments of rotating polar molecules in an electric field are reviewed. For the average orientation of a linear dipole in a strong electric field a simple relation is obtained which is based on a zeroth-order perturbation treatment of vibration in two dimensions. This relation is useful for estimating the average orientation of rotationally cold, linear dipoles in a strong electric field.