Knowledge Bank

$(HF)3$ has been previously $shown1$ through the investigation of the H-F stretch vibrational mode to exist in cyclic form in molecular beams. The work reported here marks our effort to extend the investigation of cyclic $(HF)3$ to the soft modes which display torsional motion of the HF monomer subunits. A general computational approach has been implemented for the evaluation of the torsional state energies of weakly bonded n-mers. Essentially, this is a large-scale expansion of the n-coupled rotors, but neglects torsional-stretching interactions or coupling with intra-molecular vibraiton. We show how this can be applied to the $(HF)3$ system, where we have used an idealized, electrostatic surface of Liu and $Dykstra2$. The results of the theoretical study have been used to direct an experimental investigation of these same modes which is currently underway. Preliminary results of this investigation will be presented.