A new determination of the structure of water at 25°C

The results of a new neutron diffraction experiment to measure the structure of water are presented. The data, measured at the McMaster Nuclear Reactor, are of a high quality and are analysed to yield the hydrogen-hydrogen pair correlation function using a subtraction procedure which has been used in previous experiments of this kind. This procedure circumvents the necessity of applying inelasticity corrections. The results are in good agreement with earlier work and serve to establish the general correctness of the subtraction procedure when used to determine hydrogen correlations. The data are further analysed to yield separate oxygen-hydrogen and oxygen-oxygen partial structure factors for liquid water. For the second part of the analysis an effective mass model of the dynamic scattering law is used, with the model parameter, the effective mass of the scattering particle, chosen by a least-squares fit to the measured differential cross sections. The final pair correlation functions are obtained using a maximum entropy analysis of the structure functions.