The B11244 story: rovibrational calculations for C3H(+) and C3H(-) revisited

Gas-Phase Vibrational Spectroscopy of the Hydrocarbon Cations l-C3H+, HC3H+, and c-C3H2+: Structures, Isomers, and the Influence of Ne-Tagging

We report the first gas-phase vibrational spectra of the hydrocarbon ions C₃H⁺ and C₃H₂⁺. The ions were produced by electron impact ionization of allene. Vibrational spectra of the mass-selected ions tagged with Ne were recorded using infrared predissociation spectroscopy in a cryogenic ion trap instrument using the intense and widely tunable radiation of a free electron laser. Comparison of high-level quantum chemical calculations and resonant depletion measurements revealed that the C₃H⁺ ion is exclusively formed in its most stable linear isomeric form, whereas two isomers were observed for C₃H₂⁺. Bands of the energetically favored cyclic c-C₃H₂⁺ are in excellent agreement with calculated anharmonic frequencies, whereas for the linear open-shell HCCCH⁺ (²Π_g) a detailed theoretical description of the spectrum remains challenging because of Renner–Teller and spin–orbit interactions. Good agreement between theory and experiment, however, is observed for the frequencies of the stretching modes for which an anharmonic treatment was possible. In the case of linear l-C₃H⁺, small but non-negligible effects of the attached Ne on the ion fundamental band positions and the overall spectrum were found.

Theoretical spectroscopic parameters for isotopic variants of HCO+ and HOC. J Chem Phys 2017;147:114111. [PMID: 28938835 DOI: 10.1063/1.4998467]

Theoretical spectroscopic parameters are derived for all isotopologues of HCO⁺ and HOC⁺ involving H, D, ¹⁶O, ¹⁷O, ¹⁸O, ¹²C, and ¹³C by means of a two-step procedure. Full-dimensional rovibrational calculations are first carried out to obtain numerically exact rovibrational energies for J = 0-15 in both parities. Effective spectroscopic constants for the vibrational ground state, ν₁, ν₂, and ν₃ are determined by fitting the calculated rovibrational energies to appropriate spectroscopic Hamiltonians. Combining our vibration-rotation corrections with the available experimental ground-state rotational constants, we also derive the new estimate for the equilibrium structure of HCO⁺, r_e(CH) = 1.091 98 Å and r_e(CO) = 1.105 62 Å, and for the equilibrium structure of HOC⁺, r_e(HO) = 0.990 48 Å and r_e(CO) = 1.154 47 Å. Regarding the spectroscopic parameters, our estimates are in excellent agreement with available experimental results for the isotopic variants of both HCO⁺ and HOC⁺: the agreement for the rotational constants B_v is within 3 MHz, for the quartic centrifugal distortion constants D_v within 1 kHz, and for the effective ℓ-doubling constants q_v within 2 MHz. We thus expect that our results can provide useful assistance in analyzing expected observations of the rare isotopologues of HCO⁺ and HOC⁺ that are not yet experimentally known.