| Abstract: | Off‐center impurity ions in solids often perform rotations around their regular lattice sites. Unlike quasifree rotors with rotational line spectra subject to textbook attention in quantum mechanics, the off‐center species are hindered rotors with spectra quantized in rotational bands. These bands occur because of tunneling through barriers arising along the orbital path. For an off‐center ion rotating along a planar orbit, such as the Li+ impurity nearest‐neighboring an F center in alkali halide, the hindered rotation will give rise to specific magnetic moments that couple to and quantize external magnetic fields normal to the orbital plane. We present a simple theory and estimates of Li+ magnetic dipoles and rotational bands to find conditions for an experimental verification. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2002 |
