Cooperative organic hydrogen bonds: the librational modes of cyclic methanol clusters.

Intermolecular hydrogen bond libration modes of isolated cyclic methanol trimers (approximately 613 cm(-1)) and tetramers (695 and 760 cm(-1)) are observed in pulsed jet Fourier transform infrared spectra and found to exhibit sizeable anharmonicity and mode coupling effects, opening the way for a microscopic interpretation of the broad librational bands of alcohols. The correlation of experimental OH stretching and OH libration band intensities provides important constraints for theoretical band strengths, cluster densities, and size assignments.