Reanalysis of the ground and three torsional excited states of trans-ethyl methyl ether by using an IAM-like tunneling matrix formalism

Abstract

The trans-ethyl methyl ether has two inequivalent methyl internal rotors and shows tunneling splittings of maximum up to five components. However, the barrier of these two internal rotation potentials were relatively high and the five components were not resolved in the ground state microwave spectra. In this study, well-resolved Fourier transform microwave ground state spectrum was measured for the first time to resolve the five components. The ground state microwave spectra were reanalyzed based on these new measurements and the additional millimeter-wave spectra as well as those studied previously by Fuchs et al. Ninety Fourier transform microwave spectral lines were assigned to 107 transitions in the ground state and 3508 conventional microwave absorption lines were assigned up to Ka=16 of the ground state, including all 707 lines reported by Fuchs et al. In addition, 10 transitions were observed by the double resonance experiment. They were least-squares-analyzed by the use of an internal axis method (IAM)-like tunneling matrix formalism based on an extended permutation-inversion group theoretical idea. Twenty-two molecular parameters composed of rotational constants, centrifugal distortion constants, internal rotation parameters and internal rotation tunneling parameters were determined for the ground state. The microwave spectra in the three torsionally excited states, that is, the ν28=1 C–CH3 torsional state, the ν29=1 O–CH3 torsional state and the ν30=1 skeletal torsional state, were also reanalyzed by using the IAM-like tunneling matrix formalism and somewhat extended line assignments.