The Vibrational Spectrum of Water Vapor

Recently R. Mecke (1) has published a rather complete analysis of seventeen of the vibration rotation bands of water vapor, together with an assignment of the vibrational quantum numbers. This work provides accurate values for the centers of most of the bands, though a few in the visible region of the spectrum seem for several reasons somewhat doubtful. With such complete information available, it seemed desirable to carry out a theoretical investigation of a nonlinear, symmetric triatomic molecule, similar to the treatment used by Adel and Dennison (2) on CO2, and to apply the results to H2O.