Knowledge Bank

In the course of studying ionized methane/hydrogen clusters in solid parahydrogen crystals, we accidentally stumbled upon a new set of infrared transitions in the crystal, apparently induced by the methane in the crystal (before ionization). Over 80 sharp absorption features $(\Delta \nu \sim 100MHz)$ spanning $2cm-1$ were observed in the region between hydrogen's $Q1(0)$ and $Q1(1)$ vibrational transitions. The spectroscopy of parahydrogen crystals in this region is well understood, and it was a complete surprise to observe the appearance of new transitions. In this talk we present the data and discuss our current progress in the understanding of this very unexpected spectrum.