Separating Para and Ortho Water

TL;DR

This paper reports the production of isolated para and ortho water samples in pure beams, enabling detailed studies of their properties, conversion mechanisms, and potential applications in spectroscopy and astrophysics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to produce pure, ground-state samples of para and ortho water, facilitating advanced research on their physical and chemical behaviors.

Findings

Successful generation of pure para and ortho water beams.

Potential for studying spin-conversion mechanisms and symmetry-breaking.

Applications in spectroscopy, astrophysics, and NMR experiments.

Abstract

Water exists as two nuclear-spin isomers, para and ortho, determined by the overall spin of its two hydrogen nuclei. For isolated water molecules the conversion between these isomers is forbidden and they act as different molecular species. Yet, these species are not readily separable, and little is known about their specific physical and chemical properties, conversion mechanisms, or interactions. Here we demonstrate the production of isolated samples of both spin isomers in pure beams of para and ortho water, with both species in their respective absolute ground state. These single-quantum-state samples are ideal targets for unraveling spin-conversion mechanisms, for precision spectroscopy and fundamental-symmetry-breaking studies, and for spin-enhanced applications, e. g., laboratory astrophysics and -chemistry or hypersensitized NMR experiments.