ON THE ACCURACY OF AVAILABLE WAVENUMBER VALUES FOR ELECTRONIC-VIBRO-ROTATIONAL TRANSITIONS OF THE H2 MOLECULE

Abstract

All published to date experimental wavenumber values (ν, cm–1) for electronic-vibro-rotational transitions of the H2 molecule are statistically analyzed in the vacuum wavelength range 1/ν = 600—610 nm. It is shown that a direct comparison of all datasets of various authors is blocked by the absence of deconvolving of measured spectra, blending of neighbor lines (an overlap of their profiles), and fragmentary data of most studies. Therefore, it is proposed to compare all available data with the dispersion curve of a high-resolution spectrometer by measuring and deconvolving the H2 spectra. An experimental study of such an opportunity showed that the proposed approach makes it possible not only to analyze the scatter of available data on 1/ν and ν (standard deviations are about 0.003 nm and 0.08 cm–1), but also to obtain more reliable datasets with uncertainties (95% confidence intervals) less than 0.0006 nm and 0.02 cm–1 respectively.