The rotation of molecules in fields of octahedral symmetry

Abstract

A problem in quantum mechanics which has important applications in the theory of specific heats and dielectric constants of solids, is that of determining the rotational energy states of a molecule in a potential field, such as occurs in a crystal. A mathematical treatment of the rotation of molecules in crystals was first given by Pauling, and the theory has since been extended by several other authors. In these discussions, however, either the potential energy has been assumed to depend only on one angular coordinate or the term involving the second angular coordinate has been supposed to be sufficiently small to be treated as a perturbation.