Scattering experiments on the methane-rare-gas interaction

Collisional Energy Transfer from Highly Vibrationally Excited Radicals Is Very Efficient

Although highly vibrationally excited (HVE) radicals are ubiquitous in natural environments, the effect of collisional energy transfer (ET) on their reactivity has yet to be fully characterized. We have used time-resolved IR emission spectroscopy to characterize the vibrational-to-translational quenching of a small HVE radical, ketenyl (HCCO), by inert gases. Photolysis of ethyl ethynyl ether at 193 nm provides HVE HCCO in the X̃(2)A″ electronic ground-state, with a nascent internal energy of 2.2 ± 0.6 eV. IR emission is monitored as an indicator of vibrational energy, and spectral modeling allows direct determination of the average energy lost per collision as a function of the internal energy. Collisional deactivation of HVE HCCO is shown to be minimally an order of magnitude more efficient than closed-shell molecules of comparable size. Schwartz-Slawsky-Herzfeld-Tanczos (SSHT) theory, modified for HVE molecules, suggests that this ET enhancement is due to a strong attractive intermolecular interaction.

Application of valence-bond techniques to the study of weakly bound complexes. The potential energy surface of the Ne–CH4system

We present a comprehensive survey of the Molecular Orbital-Valence Bond (MO-VB) method, a theoretical scheme developed within the framework of the Valence Bond theory to deal with weakly bound intermolecular complexes. According to the MO-VB, the wavefunction of the system is expressed as a truncated non-orthogonal Configuration Interaction expansion, which is size extensive and a priori free of basis set superposition error. We report on the recent developments of the method, which extend the range of application of the MO-VB to intermolecular complexes with a quite large number of correlated electrons, showing that VB-based methods are nowadays a valid alternative to Molecular Orbital approaches also in this field. The MO-VB has been applied to study extensively the Ne-CH(4) complex, and compared with the more standard MP4 and CCSD(T) results. We determined two analytical Potential Energy Surfaces (PES) for this system, computed at MO-VB and MP4 level, which represent the first ones coming entirely from ab initio computations. The features of our potentials are discussed, and compared to the single analytical potential which includes the anisotropy available in the literature, determined about twenty years ago by Udo Buck and co-workers using a semiempirical approach [U. Buck, A. Kolhase, D. Secrest, T. Phillips, G. Scoles and F. Grein, Mol. Phys., 1985, 55, 1233]. The differences among the three PES are quite relevant, and are due to play a relevant role in the theoretical simulations of the dynamical properties of the Ne-CH(4) system.