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A Gauge Theoretic Treatment Of Rovibrational Motion In Diatoms, Gregory Colarch
A Gauge Theoretic Treatment Of Rovibrational Motion In Diatoms, Gregory Colarch
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
The Born-Oppenheimer approximation has long been the standard approach to solving the Schrödinger equation for diatomic molecules. In it, nuclear and electronic motions are separated into "slow" and "fast" degrees of freedom and couplings between the two are ignored. The neglect of non-adiabatic couplings leads to an incomplete description of diatomic motion, and in a more refined approach, non-adiabatic couplings are uncoupled by transforming the angular momentum of the molecule and electrons into the body-fixed frame.
In this thesis we examine a "modern" form of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation by exploiting a gauge theoretic approach in a description of molecular motion. …