SATURATION SPECTROSCOPY ON THE GROUND-STATE OF HSSH

The small torsional splitting of the ground-state rotational transitions of disulfane, HSSH, has been measured by saturation dip spectroscopy to a high degree of accuracy. The observed frequency doubling of the rQ0-transitions is of the order of 150 kHz for J = 10 and increases to 180 kHz for J = 61. Thus the torsional splitting is found to exhibit a small dependence on the rotational quantum number J. The cause of this J dependence may be a change in the torsional path due to centrifugal distortion effects associated with the SSH angle. © 1990.