Observed adiabatic corrections to the born-oppenheimer approximation for diatomic molecules with ten valence electrons

Abstract

Using millimeter-wave (mw) spectroscopy pure rotational transitions were measured with very high precision in several vibrational states for many compounds of the group III/VII and IV/VI diatomic molecules. The spectra were fitted to the usual Dunham expansion adopting the normal mass relations for the Y lk except for Y 01 in order to combine all data of different isotopes for the same compound. For Y 01 the atomic mass relation given by Watson is used which introduces phenomenological parameters Δ 01 A, Δ 01 B for molecule AB taking the adiabatic and nonadiabatic corrections to the Born-Oppenheimer approximation into account. All observed spectra are well described by such a procedure. From these calculations the correction parameters Δ 01 A, Δ 01 B were obtained with an accuracy of ≈ 10% or better. Using known values of the rotational gJ factor and of the electric dipole moment the nonadiabatic part was calculated and with this result the adiabatic part was evaluated from Δ 01 for each atom. The adiabatic correction does not change very much for one specific atom by varying the chemical counterpart and in general it is less than 30% of the total correction for this class of molecules. The only exceptions are InI and the Tl and Pb compounds for which the adiabatic corrections are obtained ten to hundred times larger than those of the other compounds. No explanation is known for this behavior in the published literature.