Nuclear Magnetism in Solid Methane

For more than 30 years, the observation of nuclear magnetic interactions in solid methane has given valuable information on the reorientational dynamics of its molecules. Recently, measurements of some basic properties of nuclear absorption lineshapes, such as the. integrated intensity and the second moment, have revealed the rates at which the populations of various molecular orientational states approach thermal equilibrium. The study of solid methane has attracted widespread attention from physicists and chemists for good reason. As is the case with solid hydrogen, solid methane and its deuterated isotopes are relatively simple materials. They offer the theorist the challenge of predicting the structure and properties of the solid phases from first principles because detailed information is available about the