MP4 Study of the Anharmonic Coupling of the Shared Proton Stretching Vibration of the Protonated Water Dimer in Equilibrium and Transition States

Hydrogen bond types which do not fit accepted definitions

There are various interactions that either partially fit or do not fit the currently accepted definitions of the hydrogen bond. However, they possess characteristics of this interaction. It seems that it is partly connected to the fact that these definitions are not precise. The typical 3c-4e (three centres - four electrons) A-H⋯B hydrogen bond is characterized by the single-atom A and B centres that are highly electronegative. On the other hand, non-typical interactions that do not fit the hydrogen bond definitions well are characterised by uncommon proton donors and/or proton acceptors. The cases of multi-centre proton acceptors, π-electron or σ-electron systems are well known - such interactions are designated as A-H⋯π and A-H⋯σ hydrogen bonds, respectively. However, the cases of interactions with the multi-centre proton donors and proton acceptors do not fit the majority of definitions of hydrogen bond. The π⋯H+⋯π system in the proton-bound homodimer of acetylene is an example. This system can be classified as a hydrogen bond according to the two-sites hydrogen bond, 2sHB, definition. There are various types of interactions discussed in this review; among them, those that are undoubtedly unclassified as hydrogen bonds, i.e., hydride bonds, and charge inverted hydrogen bonds, CIHBs. Special emphasis is also put here on the proton sponges and other systems such as the [FHF]- anion or [NgHNg]+ cation (Ng is the noble gas centre).

Reduced rovibrational coupling Cartesian dynamics for semiclassical calculations: Application to the spectrum of the Zundel cation

We study the vibrational spectrum of the protonated water dimer, by means of a divide-and-conquer semiclassical initial value representation of the quantum propagator, as a first step in the study of larger protonated water clusters. We use the potential energy surface from the work of Huang et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 122, 044308 (2005)]. To tackle such an anharmonic and floppy molecule, we employ fully Cartesian dynamics and carefully reduce the coupling to global rotations in the definition of normal modes. We apply the time-averaging filter and obtain clean power spectra relative to suitable reference states that highlight the spectral peaks corresponding to the fundamental excitations of the system. Our trajectory-based approach allows for the physical interpretation of the very challenging proton transfer modes. We find that it is important, for such a floppy molecule, to selectively avoid initially exciting lower energy modes, in order to obtain cleaner spectra. The estimated vibrational energies display a mean absolute error (MAE) of ∼29 cm^-1 with respect to available multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree calculations and MAE ∼ 14 cm^-1 when compared to the optically active experimental excitations of the Ne-tagged Zundel cation. The reasonable scaling in the number of trajectories for Monte Carlo convergence is promising for applications to higher dimensional protonated cluster systems.