We report a quantum mechanical method for calculating the momentum distributions of constituent atoms of polyatomic molecules in rotational-vibrational eigenstates. Application of the present theory to triatomic molecules in the rovibrational ground state revealed that oscillatory changes appear on the proton momentum distribution in the nonlinear H₂O molecule, whilst no such modulation is present in the case of an oxygen atom in the linear CO₂ molecule. The atomic momentum distributions were analyzed in detail by means of a rigid rotor model, and it was found that the oscillation originates from quantum-mechanical delocalization of the target atom with respect to the other atoms.
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Sakaguchi et al. (2024) studied this question.
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