Separating Para and Ortho Water

Water exists as two nuclear-spin isomers, para and ortho, determined by the overall spin of its two hydrogen nuclei. For isolated water molecules the conversion between these isomers is forbidden and they act as different molecular species. Yet, these species are not readily separable, and little is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2017-10
Main Authors: Horke, Daniel A, Yuan-Pin, Chang, Długołęcki, Karol, Küpper, Jochen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrophysics
Chemical properties
Conversion
Isomers
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Organic chemistry
Water chemistry
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Water exists as two nuclear-spin isomers, para and ortho, determined by the overall spin of its two hydrogen nuclei. For isolated water molecules the conversion between these isomers is forbidden and they act as different molecular species. Yet, these species are not readily separable, and little is known about their specific physical and chemical properties, conversion mechanisms, or interactions. Here we demonstrate the production of isolated samples of both spin isomers in pure beams of para and ortho water, with both species in their respective absolute ground state. These single-quantum-state samples are ideal targets for unraveling spin-conversion mechanisms, for precision spectroscopy and fundamental-symmetry-breaking studies, and for spin-enhanced applications, e. g., laboratory astrophysics and -chemistry or hypersensitized NMR experiments.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1407.2056