Rovibrational states of H+3. Part 1: The energy region below 9000 cm−1and modelling of the non-adiabatic effects

A nearly complete treatment of the effect of non-adiabaticity on rovibrational energies of H3+ (Part III)

In this article, significant contributions of non-adiabaticity for the rovibrational bound states up to 25 000 cm-1 and total angular momentum J = 0-20 of H3+ are investigated. A coupled-perturbed full configuration interaction (CP-FCI) treatment is applied to calculate all couplings between electronic states caused by the nuclear motion. These derivative couplings were evaluated up to the second order by means of a perturbation treatment and include all nuclear Cartesian first and second derivatives of the electronic wavefunctions. In particular, the coupling of special derivatives with respect to r and R in the Jacobi coordinate representation is more significant than thought. The perturbation approach is especially optimal for the treatment of weak non-adiabaticity in case of rovibrational energies in H3+ and had not been available before for H3+ or other triatomics. Using exclusively Gaussian basis functions for CP-FCI appears to be sufficient, because explicit correlated wavefunctions are already used for all other potential energy contributions. Our work is an extension of earlier non-adiabatic investigations based on first derivative couplings of electronic states that led to the concept of geometry-dependent effective nuclear masses and which needs only a single potential energy surface for the dynamics. The implementation allows us to include all non-adiabatic effects up to the order of O(μ-2), μ being the reduced nuclear mass. Our treatment works for any isotopologue and for the whole potential energy curve or surface. By this treatment, a further reduction in deviations to experimental data for most rovibrational levels to less than 0.1 cm-1 is possible. For the related transition frequencies, 1366 of 1720 known rovibrational transitions in H3+ have deviations less than 0.1 cm-1 without using any empirically adjustable parameters or optimizing the nuclear mass for a specific transition. For many questionable assignments (deviations >0.3 cm-1) of observed transitions in H3+, a new labeling is proposed.

Analysis of QED and non-adiabaticity effects on the rovibrational spectrum of H3 + using geometry-dependent effective nuclear masses

The influence of QED effects (including one- and two-electron Lamb-shift, Araki-Sucher term, one-loop self-energy, and finite nuclear size correction) together with non-adiabatic effects on the rovibrational bound states of H₃ ⁺ has been investigated. Non-adiabaticity is modeled by using geometry-dependent effective nuclear masses together with only one single potential energy surface. In conclusion, for rovibrational states below 20 000 cm^-1, QED and relativistic effects do nearly compensate, and a potential energy surface based on Born-Oppenheimer energies and diagonal adiabatic corrections has nearly the same quality as the one including relativity with QED; the deviations between the two approaches for individual rovibrational states are mostly below 0.02 cm^-1. The inclusion of non-adiabatic effects is important, and it reduces deviations from experiments mostly below 0.1 cm^-1.

Non-adiabatic effects in the H3+ spectrum

The effect of non-adiabatic coupling on the computed rovibrational energy levels amounts to about 2 cm-1 for H3+ and must be included in high-accuracy calculations. Different strategies to obtain the corresponding energy shifts are reviewed in the article. A promising way is to introduce effective vibrational reduced masses that depend on the nuclear configuration. A new empirical method that uses the stockholder atoms-in-molecules approach to this effect is presented and applied to H3+. Furthermore, a highly accurate potential energy surface for the D3+ isotopologue, which includes relativistic and leading quantum electrodynamic terms, is constructed and used to analyse the observed rovibrational frequencies for this molecule. Accurate band origins are obtained that improve existing data. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Advances in hydrogen molecular ions: H3+, H5+ and beyond'.

Investigation of Nonadiabatic Effects for the Vibrational Spectrum of a Triatomic Molecule: The Use of a Single Potential Energy Surface with Distance-Dependent Masses for H3. J Phys Chem A 2017;121:7016-7030. [PMID: 28820589 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpca.7b04703]

On the basis of first-principles, the influence of nonadiabatic effects on the vibrational bound states of H₃⁺ has been investigated using distance-dependent reduced masses and only one single potential energy surface. For these new vibrational calculations, potentials based on explicitly correlated wave functions are used where, in addition, adiabatic corrections and relativistic contributions are taken into account. For the first time, several different fully distance-dependent reduced mass surfaces in three dimensions have been incorporated in the vibrational calculations.

A systematic investigation of the ground state potential energy surface of H3+

Based on different ab initio electronic structure calculations (CI-R12 and Gaussian Geminals) of the Born-Oppenheimer electronic energy E(BO) of H(3)(+) from high to highest quality, we build up a potential energy surface which represents a highly reliable form of the topology of the whole potential region, locally and globally. We use the CI-R12 method in order to get within reasonable CPU-time a relatively dense grid of energy points. We demonstrate that CI-R12 is good enough to give an accurate surface, i.e., Gaussian Geminals are not absolutely necessary. For different types of potential energy surface fits, we performed variational calculations of all bound vibrational states, including resonances above the dissociation limit, for total angular momentum J = 0. We clarify the differences between different fits of the energy to various functional forms of the potential surface. Small rms-values (<1 cm(-1)) of the fit do not provide precise information about the interpolatory behaviour of the fit functions.

Rovibrational energy levels of H3(+) with energies above the barrier to linearity

The H(3)(+) potential energy surface is sampled at 5900 geometries with the emphasis on the nonequilibrium and asymptotic points. Apart from the Born-Oppenheimer energy converged to the accuracy better than 0.02 cm(-1), the adiabatic and the leading relativistic corrections are computed at each geometry. To represent analytically the potential energy surface, the parameters of a power series are determined by fitting to the computed energy points. Possible choice of nuclear masses simulating the nonadiabatic effects in solving the nuclear Schrodinger equation is analyzed. A set of theoretically predicted rovibrational transitions is confronted with the experimental data in the 10,700-13,700 cm(-1) window of the spectra.

Chemical probing spectroscopy of H3+ above the barrier to linearity

We have performed chemical probing spectroscopy of H(3) (+) ions trapped in a cryogenic 22-pole ion trap. The ions were buffer gas cooled to approximately 55 K by collisions with helium and argon. Excitation to states above the barrier to linearity was achieved by a Ti:sapphire laser operated between 11 300 and 13 300 cm(-1). Subsequent collisions of the excited H(3) (+) ions with argon lead to the formation of ArH(+) ions that were detected by a quadrupole mass spectrometer with high sensitivity. We report the observation of 17 previously unobserved transitions to states above the barrier to linearity. Comparison to theoretical calculations suggests that the transition strengths of some of these lines are more than five orders of magnitude smaller than those of the fundamental band, which renders them-to the best of our knowledge-the weakest H(3) (+) transitions observed to date.

The H(3) (+) rovibrational spectrum revisited with a global electronic potential energy surface

In this paper, we have computed the rovibrational spectrum of the H(3) (+) molecule using a new global potential energy surface, invariant under all permutations of the nuclei, that includes the long range electrostatic interactions analytically. The energy levels are obtained by a variational calculation using hyperspherical coordinates. From the comparison with available experimental results for low lying levels, we conclude that our accuracy is of the order of 0.1 cm(-1) for states localized in the vicinity of equilateral triangular configurations of the nuclei, and changes to the order of 1 cm(-1) when the system is distorted away from equilateral configurations. Full rovibrational spectra up to the H(+)+H(2) dissociation energy limit have been computed. The statistical properties of this spectrum (nearest neighbor distribution and spectral rigidity) show the quantum signature of classical chaos and are consistent with random matrix theory. On the other hand, the correlation function, even when convoluted with a smoothing function, exhibits oscillations which are not described by random matrix theory. We discuss a possible similarity between these oscillations and the ones observed experimentally.

Modeling of HeN+ clusters. II. Calculation of He3+ vibrational spectrum

We have computed the vibrational spectrum of the helium ionized trimer He(3)(+) using three different potential energy surfaces [D. T. Chang and G. L. Gellene, J. Chem. Phys. 119, 4694 (2003); E. Scifoni et al., ibid. 125, 164304 (2006); I. Paidarova et al., Chem. Phys. 342, 64 (2007)]. Differences in the details of these potential energy surfaces induce discrepancies between bound state energies of the order of 0.01 eV. The effects of the geometric phase induced by the conical intersection between the ground electronic potential energy surface and the first excited one are studied by computing vibrational spectra with and without this phase. The six lowest vibrational bound states are negligibly affected by the geometric phase. Indeed, they correspond to wavefunctions localized in the vicinity of the linear symmetric configurations and can be assigned well defined vibrational quantum numbers. On the other hand, higher excited states are delocalized, cannot be assigned definite vibrational quantum numbers, and the geometric phase shifts their energies by approximately 0.005 eV.

Accurate ab initio based multisheeted double many-body expansion potential energy surface for the three lowest electronic singlet states of H3+

The authors present diabatic and adiabatic potential energy surfaces for the three lowest electronic singlet states of H3+. The modeling of the surfaces is based on the multi-sheeted double many-body expansion method which consists of dressing the various matrix elements of the diatomics-in-molecules potential matrix with three-body terms. The avoided crossing between the two lowest states and the conical intersection between the second and the third state are accurately represented by construction.

Near-infrared spectroscopy of H3+ above the barrier to linearity

Since the Royal Society Discussion Meeting on H3+ in 2000, the laboratory spectroscopy of H3+ has entered a new regime. For the first time, transitions of H3+ above the barrier to linearity have been observed. A highly sensitive near-infrared spectrometer based on a titanium:sapphire laser and incorporating a dual-beam, double-modulation technique with bidirectional optical multi-passing has been developed in order to detect these transitions, which are more than 4600 times weaker than the fundamental band. We discuss our recent work on the 2v1 + 2v2(2) <-- 0, 3v1 + v2(1) <-- 0, v1 + 4v2(2) <-- 0, v1 + 4V2(4) <-- 0 and 2v1 + 3v2(1) <-- 0 combination bands and the 5v2(1) <-- 0, 5v2(3) <-- 0, 52(5) <-- 0 and 6v2(2) <-- 0 overtone bands. Experimentally determined energy levels provide a critical test of ab initio calculations in this challenging energy regime (greater than 10,000 cm(-1)). By comparing the experimental energy levels and theoretical energy levels from ab initio calculations in which the adiabatic and relativistic corrections are incorporated, the extent of higher-order effects such as non-adiabatic and radiative corrections is revealed.

Rotation-vibrational states of H3+ and the adiabatic approximation

We discuss recent progress in the calculation and identification of rotation-vibrational states of H3+ at intermediate energies up to 13,000 cm(-1). Our calculations are based on the potential energy surface of Cencek et al. which is of sub-microhartree accuracy. As this surface includes diagonal adiabatic and relativistic corrections to the fixed nuclei electronic energies, the remaining discrepancies between our calculated and experimental data should be due to the neglect of non-adiabatic coupling to excited electronic states in the calculations. To account for this, our calculated energy values were adjusted empirically by a simple correction formula. Based on our understanding of the adiabatic approximation, we suggest two new approaches to account for the off-diagonal adiabatic correction, which should work; however, they have not been tested yet for H3+. Theoretical predictions made for the above-barrier energy region of recent experimental interest are accurate to 0.35 cm(-1) or better.

Symmetry Analysis of the Vibronic States in the Upper Conical Potential (23A‘) of Triplet

The symmetry properties of the rovibronic resonance states (Slonczewski resonances) supported by an upright conical potential are investigated. These symmetry properties lead to a useful correlation between states calculated with and without consideration of the geometrical phase, which can assist in the assignment of those states. The vibronic resonance states of triplet H3(+) (2(3)A'), which had been studied by us before, have now been assigned to spectroscopic quantum numbers.

Accurate double many-body expansion potential energy surface for triplet H3+. II. The upper adiabatic sheet (2 3A′)

We report on a global potential energy hypersurface for the upper sheet of the lowest triplet state of H3+. The analytic representation is based on the double many-body expansion theory. The ab initio data points, calculated with a large cc-pV5Z basis, are represented with a root mean square deviation of only 5.54 cm(-1) in the energy region below the H(+)+2H(2S) dissociation threshold. The quasi-bound vibronic states supported by this surface have also been calculated.