Parity‐Violating Potentials for the Torsional Motion of Methanol (CH3OH) and Its Isotopomers (CD3OH, 13CH3OH,CH3OD,CH3OT,CHD2OH,and CHDTOH)

We present calculations on the parity‐conserving and the parity‐violating potentials in several MeOH isotopomers for the torsional motion by the newly developed methods of electroweak quantum chemistry from our group. The absolute magnitudes of the parity‐violating potentials for MeOH are small compared to H₂O₂ and C₂H₄, but similar to C₂H₆, which is explained by the high (threefold) symmetry of the torsional top in MeOH and C₂H₆. ‘Chiral’ and ‘achiral’ isotopic substitutions in MeOH lead to small changes only, but vibrational averaging is discussed to be important in all these cases. Simple isotopic sum rules are derived to explain and predict the relationships between parity‐violating potentials in various conformations and configurations of the several isotopomers investigated. The parity‐violating energy difference Δ_pvE=E_pv(R)?E_pv(S) between the enantiomers of chiral CHDTOH, first synthesized by Arigoni and co‐workers, is for two conformers ca. ?3.66?10^?17 and for the third one +7.32?10^?17 hc cm^?1. Thus, for Δ_pvE, the conformation is more important than the configuration (at the equilibrium geometries, without vibrational averaging). Averaging over torsional tunneling may lead to further cancellation and even smaller values.