EXPERIMENTAL-DETERMINATION OF THE DIPOLE-MOMENT OF HCL DIMER USING ANELECTROSTATIC HEXAPOLE FIELD

HCl dimers were prepared in a pulsed supersonic beam of neat HCl. The dimers were focused in an electrostatic hexapole field. Using computer simulation, the focusing curve could be fit, assuming contributions f rom both first and second order Stark effects. The dipole moment, base d on simulation, was found to be 1.5 +/- 0.1 D. The ability to observe an effective dipole moment in a system where the donor-acceptor tunne ling is fast is surprising. It may indicate that the understanding of the interaction of floppy systems with hexapole field is not complete.