These are our recommended values for the frequencies of all of the vibrational modes of a C60 molecule. The colored cells correspond to modes which are Raman-active (green and blue) or IR-active (red). By clicking in the mode column, you can view animations of the mode displacement patterns, as calculated from first-principles by Adams, Page, et. al. (citations are given in Table 2.4 of our review listed below). For degenerate modes, the animation displays the pattern for a single arbitrarily selected partner. For this particular first-principles method, the average deviation of the calculated frequencies from our recommended values in the third column is 3.9%.

Modes whose frequencies appear in bold type have been unequivocally identified from Raman, IR, neutron, or fluorescence experiments. For the remaining modes, we looked for very weak peaks in the Raman and IR spectra and assigned them to fundamentals using the following rules: a) individual mode frequencies should not deviate by much more than 5% from first-principles predictions, b) the fundamental frequencies should provide a satisfactory explanation of the second- and higher-order Raman and IR spectra, c) the assignments should be consistent with the measured isotopic dependence of the Ag(2) mode, and d) the assignments should be consistent with the latest high-resolution inelastic neutron scattering experiments. Details of this procedure are discussed in our review article "Vibrational Spectroscopy of C60," by J. Menéndez and J.B. Page, in Light Scattering in Solids VIII, ed. by M. Cardona and G. Güntherodt, Springer, Berlin, 2000 (0.7 MB, pdf file). José Menéndez and John Page welcome feedback and suggestions on the vibrational modes of C60.