New ab initio adiabatic potential energy surfaces and bound state calculations for the singlet ground X̃1A1 and excited C̃1B2(21A′) states of SO2

Roaming in highly excited states: The central atom elimination of triatomic molecule decomposition

Chemical reactions are generally assumed to proceed from reactants to products along the minimum energy path (MEP). However, straying from the MEP-roaming-has been recognized as an unconventional reaction mechanism and found to occur in both the ground and first excited states. Its existence in highly excited states is however not yet established. We report a dissociation channel to produce electronically excited fragments, S(1D)+O2(a1Δg), from SO2 photodissociation in highly excited states. The results revealed two dissociation pathways: One proceeds through the MEP to produce vibrationally colder O2(a1Δg) and the other yields vibrationally hotter O2(a1Δg) by means of a roaming pathway involving an intramolecular O abstraction during reorientation motion. Such roaming dynamics may well be the rule rather than the exception for molecular photodissociation through highly excited states.

Non-adiabatic coupling in the potential energy surfaces of SO2 molecule

To investigate the potential energy surfaces and the coupling between the adiabatic states of SO2 molecules, it is necessary to consider the non-adiabatic coupling terms (NACTs), where the Born-Oppenheimer approximation breaks down. In this work, we analyze the conical intersections between 1 1A1 and 1 1B2 states (the A' states in Cs symmetry) and 1 1A2 and 1 1B1 states (the A'' states in Cs symmetry) using NACTs and adiabatic-to-diabatic transformation (ADT) angles. Our results confirm reasonable interaction between 1 1A1 and 1 1B2 states and strong interaction between 1 1A2 and 1 1B1 states.

Theoretical Study on the Structure and Dissociation Mechanism of Electronic Excited States of Nitrosyl Bromide Molecules

High-level ab initio calculations have been presented on nitrosyl bromide, BrNO, which are performed by the internally contracted explicitly correlated multireference configuration interaction (icMRCI-F12) method with Davidson correction. A total of 17 electronic states of BrNO from the ground state to the excited states at energy below 7 eV have been investigated. The energies and transitions of the states have been obtained, along with potential energy curves along the Br-N-O angle and the N-Br and N-O bond lengths. The photodissociation mechanism of the excited state involved in the UV-vis energy region has been discussed based on our calculation results. Our study would be of value to understand the interaction and dynamics of the electronic excited states and thus the photochemical processes of the BrNO molecules.

On neglecting Coriolis and related couplings in first-principles rovibrational spectroscopy: Considerations of symmetry, accuracy, and simplicity. II. Case studies for H2O isotopologues, H3+, O3, and NH3

For centuries, it has been known that vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom are in general not separable. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about the best strategies for approximately separating these degrees of freedom in practice-even in the case of semirigid molecules, where the separation is most meaningful. There is also some confusion in the literature about the proper way to quantify the magnitude of the Coriolis (i.e., rotation-vibration) coupling in rovibrational Hamiltonians or its effect on the rovibrational eigenenergies. In this study, a vibrational-coordinate-independent metric is proposed to quantify the magnitude of the Coriolis contribution to the rovibrational Hamiltonian. The impact of Coriolis coupling on the rovibrational eigenenergies is computed numerically exactly, using both full and various truncated Hamiltonians. The role played by the choice of the vibrational coordinate system-and especially by the choice of "embedding" or body-fixed frame-is examined extensively, both numerically and analytically. This investigation targets several molecular prototypes, all of which serve as important benchmarks for the high-resolution spectroscopic community. Most of these are triatomic molecules, including water (H₂¹⁶O), its deuterated isotopologues (D₂¹⁶O and HD¹⁶O), H₃⁺, and ozone (¹⁶O₃), but the tetratomic ammonia molecule (¹⁴NH₃) is also investigated. These studies provide important insight into the nature of Coriolis coupling under various circumstances. The findings of this study also have significant practical ramifications, vis-à-vis the use of simplifying numerical approximation techniques in nuclear-motion computations.

A semi-classical approach to the calculation of highly excited rotational energies for asymmetric-top molecules

We report a new semi-classical method to compute highly excited rotational energy levels of an asymmetric-top molecule.

We report a new semi-classical method to compute highly excited rotational energy levels of an asymmetric-top molecule. The method forgoes the idea of a full quantum mechanical treatment of the ro-vibrational motion of the molecule. Instead, it employs a semi-classical Green's function approach to describe the rotational motion, while retaining a quantum mechanical description of the vibrations. Similar approaches have existed for some time, but the method proposed here has two novel features. First, inspired by the path integral method, periodic orbits in the phase space and tunneling paths are naturally obtained by means of molecular symmetry analysis. Second, the rigorous variational method is employed for the first time to describe the molecular vibrations. In addition, we present a new robust approach to generating rotational energy surfaces for vibrationally excited states; this is done in a fully quantum-mechanical, variational manner. The semi-classical approach of the present work is applied to calculating the energies of very highly excited rotational states and it reduces dramatically the computing time as well as the storage and memory requirements when compared to the fullly quantum-mechanical variational approach. Test calculations for excited states of SO₂ yield semi-classical energies in very good agreement with the available experimental data and the results of fully quantum-mechanical calculations.

Ro-vibronic transition intensities for triatomic molecules from the exact kinetic energy operator; electronic spectrum for the C̃ 1B2 ← X̃ 1A1 transition in SO2

A procedure for calculating ro-vibronic transition intensities for triatomic molecules within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is reported. Ro-vibrational energy levels and wavefunctions are obtained with the DVR3D suite, which solves the nuclear motion problem with an exact kinetic energy operator. Absolute transition intensities are calculated both with the Franck-Condon approximation and with a full transition dipole moment surface. The theoretical scheme is tested on C̃ ¹B₂ ← X̃ ¹A₁ ro-vibronic transitions of SO₂. Ab initio potential energy and dipole moment surfaces are generated for this purpose. The calculated ro-vibronic transition intensities and cross sections are compared with the available experimental and theoretical data.

Final State Resolved Quantum Predissociation Dynamics of SO2(C̃1B2) and Its Isotopomers via a Crossing with a Singlet Repulsive State

The fragmentation dynamics of predissociative SO₂(C̃¹B₂) is investigated on an accurate adiabatic potential energy surface (PES) determined from high level ab initio data. This singlet PES features non-C_2v equilibrium geometries for SO₂, which are separated from the SO(X̃³Σ^-) + O(³P) dissociation limit by a barrier resulting from a conical intersection with a repulsive singlet state. The ro-vibrational state distribution of the SO fragment is determined quantum mechanically for many predissociative states of several sulfur isotopomers of SO₂. Significant rotational and vibrational excitations are found in the SO fragment. It is shown that these fragment internal state distributions are strongly dependent on the predissociative vibronic states, and the excitation typically increases with the photon energy.

Ab initio potential energy surface and vibration-rotation energy levels of sulfur dioxide

An accurate potential energy surface of sulfur dioxide, SO₂ , in its ground electronic state X∼ 1A1 has been determined from ab initio calculations using the coupled-cluster approach in conjunction with the correlation-consistent basis sets up to septuple-zeta quality. The results obtained with the conventional and explicitly correlated coupled-cluster methods are compared. The role of the core-electron correlation, higher-order valence-electron correlation, scalar relativistic, and adiabatic effects in determining the structure and dynamics of the SO₂ molecule is discussed. The vibration-rotation energy levels of the ³² SO₂ and ³⁴ SO₂ isotopologues were predicted using a variational approach. It was shown that the inclusion of the aforementioned effects was mandatory to attain the "spectroscopic" accuracy. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

First-principles C band absorption spectra of SO2 and its isotopologues

The low-energy wing of the C∼B21←X∼¹A₁ absorption spectra for SO₂ in the ultraviolet region is computed for the 32S,³³S,³⁴S and ³⁶S isotopes, using the recently developed ab initio potential energy surfaces (PESs) of the two electronic states and the corresponding transition dipole surface. The state-resolved absorption spectra from various ro-vibrational states of SO₂(X∼¹A₁) are computed. When contributions of these excited ro-vibrational states are included, the thermally averaged spectra are broadened but maintain their key characters. Excellent agreement with experimental absorption spectra is found, validating the accuracy of the PESs. The isotope shifts of the absorption peaks are found to increase linearly with energy, in good agreement with experiment.