Methane partition function

Four line lists spanning the [0-5000]/cm infrared region were built at T = 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 K. For each of these four temperatures, we have constructed two versions of line lists: a version for high-resolution applications containing strong and medium lines and a full version appropriate for low-resolution opacity calculations.

A comparison with available empirical databases is discussed in detail for both cold and hot bands giving a very good agreement for line positions, typically <0.1-0.5/cm and ~5% for intensities of strong lines. Together with numerical tests using various basis sets, this confirms the computational convergence of our results for the most important lines, which is the major issue for theoretical spectra predictions. We showed that transitions with lower state energies up to 14,000/cm could give significant contributions to the methane opacity and have to be systematically taken into account.