Optical properties of molecular hydrogen

Variational methods are used to calculate the parallel and perpendicular dynamic dipole polarizabilities, the refractive index, the Verdet constant, the Rayleigh and Raman scattering cross sections, and the Rayleigh and Raman depolarization factors of molecular hydrogen as a function of frequency of the incident radiation. The results are satisfactory at long wavelengths but they fail for wavelengths less than about 2500 Å because of inadequacies in the representation of the wave function of the undisturbed molecule. By scaling the results to ensure they tend to the zero-frequency limits of Kolos and Wolniewicz we obtain, at the laser wavelength 6328 Å used by Bridge and Buckingham, 0.126 for the molecular anisotropy K , 0.818 Å 3 for the mean polarizability and 0.309 Å 3 for the polarizability anisotropy compared with the measured values of 0.128, 0.819 Å 3 and 0.314 Å 3 respectively.