15min:

JINHAI CHEN, TIMOTHY C. STEIMLE, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287.

A description of the bonding in the ground and low-lying electronic states of the first-row transition metal monohydrides becomes complicated because of the simultaneous involvement of the 3dⁿ 4s², 3dⁿ⁺¹ 4s¹ and, to some extent, 3dⁿ 4s¹ 4p¹ electron configurations of the metal. The permanent electric dipole moment can provide insight into this complicated bonding. Here we report on the determination of µ_e for chromium CrD. A number of low-N lines of the X⁶ - A⁶ (0,0) band of chromium monodeuteride, CrD, have been recorded at near the natural line width limit by combining a supersonic molecular beam with high resolution laser excitation spectroscopy. The analysis gives the permanent electric dipole moment of the X⁶ (v=0) state as 3.51(3)D and 1.152(5)D for the A⁶ (v=0) state can be measured with higher precision because of some interesting near degeneracies in its level structure. A comparison with theoretical predictions for CrH''' and experimental values other 3d transition metal monohydrides will be given.