title: The optical rotatory power of water.
abstract: Ab initio molecular orbital calculations of the optical rotatory response of a single oriented water molecule are described. The unique tensor element g(xy) was computed to be -0.047 bohr(3) with CCSD/6-311+G(d,p). A value of -0.033 was obtained with the minimal valence basis that was better suited to parsing the rotatory response among a limited number of excited states. Transition moments were calculated ab initio and qualitatively derived from the wave functions. Rotations were reckoned from the relative dispositions of the transition moments with respect to the wavevectors. In this way, it was possible to intuitively reckon the form of the optical rotation tensor consistent with that from higher levels of theory and to establish which excitations make the most significant contributions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Box 351700, Seattle, Washington 98195-1700, USA. cisborn@u.washington.edu
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Isborn
authors.forename: Kacey
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Claborn
authors.forename: Bart
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kahr