Polarisation of the Raman bands of water and deuterium oxide

Abstract

The Raman spectra of liquid H₂O and D₂O have been photographed by interposing a double image prism in front of the slit of the spectrograph. The three components of the principal Raman band in the two cases are more and more depolarised in the order of increasing frequency, the component of lowest frequency being highly polarised, and that of highest frequency being highly depolarised. The band Δv = 1235 cm.^-1 in the case of D₂O is imperfectly polarised, while the low frequency Raman band (Δv≈175 cm.^-1) is depolarised to the extent of 6/7 in both cases. A tentative explanation is suggested to interpret the observed results.