Temperature-Dependent Rotational Energy Spectrum

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This Demonstration studies the pure rotational spectrum of the quantum rigid rotor problem (neglecting centrifugal distortion), described by the Hamiltonian , where
is the angular momentum operator and
is the moment of inertia. The energy levels are given by
, where
is the rotational constant and the transition frequency between two adjacent levels is
(selection rules only allow transitions that satisfy
). The left graphic shows the spectrum consisting of a series of equally spaced lines, where the relative intensity of each line depends on the probability to occupy the initial state in thermal equilibrium,
, where
is the Boltzmann constant and
is the temperature. The left and right graphics show the spectrum for a given ratio
and the energy level diagram, and the red highlighting shows the correspondence between a pair of energy levels and a specific transition frequency.
Contributed by: Porscha McRobbie and Eitan Geva (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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"Temperature-Dependent Rotational Energy Spectrum"
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/TemperatureDependentRotationalEnergySpectrum/
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Published: March 7 2011