High Resolution Electronic Spectroscopy of Hydroxyl-Rare Gas Complexes

For many years, scientists have studied the spectroscopy of van der Waals complexes in past to understand intermolecular interactions and potential energy surfaces. There are abundant experiments and theoretical calculations on the closed-shell van der Waals complexes.1,2 Relatively speaking, the open-shell complexes have attracted much less attention until recently. The sparsity of information is due to both the difficulty of preparing the species and the complexity of their spectroscopy, which involves both unquenched electronic orbital and spin angular momenta. In the past four years, there have been several experimental and theoretical papers centered on Ar•OH/D and Ne•OH/D.3,4 However, except for one microwave experiment5 the previous works lack information about fine and hyperfine structure due to the resolution limit of dye laser used in the laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) studies.