The vibration-rotation hamiltonian

Abstract

A method is given for deriving a hamiltonian for a polyatomic molecule in generalized coordinates. By this technique, one may treat linear and nonlinear molecules in the same way. It is shown that the proof which asserts that the determinant of the moment of inertia tensor for a linear molecule vanishes is fallacious and, as an example, a hamiltonian for a linear triatomic molecule is derived and discussed.