Sextic force field of nitrous oxide

Abstract

The sextic force field in the curvilinear internal coordinates has been studied for the nitrous oxide molecule from the spectroscopic data of 14N 2 16O, 14N 15N 16O, and 15N 14N 16O. The bands below 6600 cm −1 have been used. The force constants in the internal coordinates are converted to those in dimensionless normal coordinates by two successive transformations. The vibration Hamiltonian matrix for each symmetry species of a given isotopic species has been constructed from the harmonic oscillator basis functions, and it is then diagonalized numerically to give the vibrational energy levels and the wavefunctions. The latter have been used for the evaluation of ratational constants. The least-squares refinement has been very successful in the present study, and it is shown that the general quartic force field supplemented by the quintic and sextic stretching diagonal force constants estimated from the Morse function, provided that the terms up to sextic are kept in the dimensionless normal coordinate space, well reproduces the spectroscopic constants such as the vibrational levels, rotational constants, l-type doubling constants, and centrifugal distortion constants. The spectroscopic constants of the isotopic molecules which are excluded from the refinement process are also in good agreement with the computed ones. The bond dissociation energies of the NN and NO bonds estimated from the present results have been critically examined.