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We report the measurement of two new perpendicular (D2O)3 torsional bands by terahertz laser vibration–rotation–tunneling (VRT) spectroscopy of a planar pulsed supersonic expansion. The first (28.0 cm−1) band corresponds to the k=±2l←0 transition, and is the lowest frequency vibrational spectrum observed for a water cluster. The second (81.8 cm−1) band originates in the first excited torsional state, and has been assigned as k=3u←±1l. An effective three-dimensional Hamiltonian is derived to describe the rotational structure of each torsional state. Degenerate torsional levels with k=±1 and k=±2 exhibit a Coriolis splitting linear in K implying the presence of vibrational angular momentum, and a second-order splitting from off-diagonal coupling between degenerate sublevels with +|k| and −|k|. With this effective Hamiltonian we fit a total of 554 rovibrational transitions in five different bands connecting the lowest nine torsional states, with a rms residual of 1.36 MHz. The data set comprises the two new VRT bands together with the 41.1 cm−1 parallel band, the 89.6 cm−1 parallel band, and the 98.1 cm−1 perpendicular band. This analysis provides a comprehensive characterization of the torsional energy levels in (D2O)3 up to 100 cm−1 above the zero-point energy, and confirms the torsional assignments for all five (D2O)3 VRT bands observed to date. Moreover, it vindicates the adiabatic separation of the trimer torsional and hydrogen bond stretch/bend vibrational modes which underlies the torsional model.
Viant et al. (Mon,) studied this question.