English

Hyperfine-Resolved Rovibrational and Rotational Spectroscopy of OH$^+$ ($X ^3\Sigma^-$)

Atomic and Molecular Clusters 2026-05-13 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics Chemical Physics

Abstract

The OH+^+ (X3ΣX ^3\Sigma^-) radical cation has been investigated by combining a 4 K 22-pole ion trap apparatus with high-resolution IR and THz radiation sources. Applying different types of action spectroscopic methods, the fundamental vibrational band in the 3 μ\mum range and the spin manifold of the N=10N=1 \leftarrow 0 rotational transition around 1 THz have been extended and refined. Additionally, the spin manifold of the N=21N=2 \leftarrow 1 rotational transition, scattered around 2 THz, has been measured for the first time with microwave accuracy. Although all hyperfine components of the pure rotational transitions are affected by considerable Zeeman splittings, a simulation of their contours allowed us to extract the field-free center frequencies with high accuracy. A global fit combining rovibrational and pure rotational transitions from the literature with those newly obtained in this work was performed, leading to improvements in the spectroscopic constants of OH+^+, particularly those in the ground vibrational state.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.12102,
  title  = {Hyperfine-Resolved Rovibrational and Rotational Spectroscopy of OH$^+$ ($X ^3\Sigma^-$)},
  author = {Weslley G. D. P. Silva and Lea Schneider and Urs U. Graf and Holger S. P. Müller and Pavol Jusko and Arshia M. Jacob and Dominik Riechers and Stephan Schlemmer and Oskar Asvany},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.12102},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

10 pages, including 2 figures, 5 tables, and references. In press at Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys