The discovery of anions in the interstellar medium has shown that they are very reactive species.

Two ketones of atmospheric interest, methyl glyoxal and methyl vinyl ketone, are studied using explicitly correlated coupled cluster theory and core–valence correlation-consistent basis sets. The work focuses on the far-infrared region. At the employed level of theory, the rotational constants can be determined to within a few megahertz of the experimental data. Both molecules present two conformers, trans/cis and antiperiplanar (Ap)/synperiplanar (Sp), respectively. trans-Methyl glyoxal and Ap-methyl vinyl ketone are the preferred structures. cis-Methyl glyoxal is a secondary minimum of very low stability, which justifies the unavailability of experimental data in this form. In methyl vinyl ketone, the two conformers are almost isoenergetic, but the interconversion implies a relatively high torsional barrier of 1798 cm–1. A very low methyl torsional barrier was estimated for trans-methyl glyoxal (V 3 = 273.6 cm–1). Barriers of 429.6 and 380.7 cm–1 were computed for Ap- and Sp-methyl vinyl ketone. Vibrational second-order perturbation theory was applied to determine the rovibrational parameters. The far-infrared region was explored using a variational procedure of reduced dimensionality. For trans-methyl glyoxal, the ground vibrational state was estimated to split by 0.067 cm–1, and the two low excited energy levels (1 0) and (0 1) were found to lie at 89.588 cm–1/88.683 cm–1 (A2/E) and 124.636 cm–1/123.785 cm–1 (A2/E). For Ap- and Sp-methyl vinyl ketone, the ground vibrational state splittings were estimated to be 0.008 and 0.017 cm–1, respectively.