Depolarized Rayleigh scattering and hydrogen bonding in liquid water

Abstract

Depolarized Rayleigh scattering spectra have been obtained for water over essentially its entire liquid range at atmospheric pressure. Three principal components of the Rayleigh line were identified and these were described in terms of molecular reorientation of the molecules, the formation and breaking of hydrogen bonds between molecules, and polarizability anisotropies resulting from the collisions or interactions among several molecules. For the region of the spectrum 0 to 50 cm⁻¹, the most intense component of the spectrum is that which we have ascribed to hydrogen bond kinetics; from it we have determined the mean lifetime of a hydrogen bond in water as a function of temperature.