The coupling between translation and rotation for monomeric water in noble gas matrices.

The rotation of water in noble gas matrices has been studied. It is shown that the rotation-translation coupling model of Friedmann and Kimel predicts rotation line spacings, which are close to the experimental observations for H2O, D2O, and HDO, when gas phase rotation constants are used. The model gives intensity estimates in reasonable agreement with the observations for the local oscillator bands, which accompany the rotation spectrum. It also predicts the intensity variations in the bending region of H2O between neon, argon, and krypton matrices.