A new potential energy surface for OH(A 2Sigma(+))-Ar: the van der Waals complex and scattering dynamics

New ab initio studies of the OH(A (2)Sigma(+))-Ar system reveal significantly deeper potential energy wells than previously believed, particularly for the linear configuration in which Ar is bound to the oxygen atom side of OH(A (2)Sigma(+)). In spite of this difference with previous ab initio work, bound state calculations based on a new RCCSD(T) potential energy surface yield an energy level structure in reasonable accord with previous theoretical and experimental studies. Preliminary open and closed shell quantum mechanical and quasiclassical trajectory scattering calculations are also performed on the new potential energy surface surface. The findings are discussed in the light of previous theoretical and experimental results for rotational energy transfer in collisions of OH(A (2)Sigma(+)) with Ar.     

Effect of rotational energy on the reaction Li + HF(upsilon = 0,j)-->LiF + H: an experimental and computational study

In a crossed molecular-beam study we have measured angular and time-of-flight distributions of the product LiF from the reaction Li + HF(upsilon = 0)-->LiF + H at various collision energies ranging from 97 to 363 meV for three markedly different rotational state distributions of HF obtained at nozzle temperatures close to 315, 510, and 850 K. Particularly, for the low and intermediate collision energies we observe significant effects of the varying j-state populations on the shape of the product angular distributions. At 315 K an additional feature appears in the angular distributions which is interpreted as being due to scattering from HF dimers. The experimental data are compared with simulations of the monomer reaction based on extensive quasiclassical trajectory calculations on a new state-of-the-art ab initio potential energy surface. We find an overall good agreement between the theoretical simulations and the experimental data for the title reaction, especially at the highest HF nozzle temperature.     

A classical versus quantum mechanics study of the \hbox{OH}\,+\,\hbox{CO} \rightarrow\,\hbox{H}\,+\,\hbox{CO}_2 (J?=?0) reaction

When appropriately used, the multiconfigurational self-consistent field (MCSCF) approximation is useful in discerning correct electronic structure results. However, with the increasing size of chemical systems of interest, MCSCF rapidly becomes unfeasible due to the requirement of larger active spaces, which lead to computationally unmanageable numbers of configurations. This situation is especially true for complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF). In particular, reducing this computational expense by using restricted active spaces in solving for gradients and nonadiabatic couplings (NACs) during dynamics runs would save computer time. However, the validity of such restricted spaces is not well-known even for recovering the majority of the nondynamical correlation and inevitably varies between chemical systems across a range of nuclear geometries. As such, we use the recently implemented coupled perturbed–occupation restricted multiple active space (CP-ORMAS) equations (West et al., unpublished) to verify the accuracy of this approximation for gradients and NACs vectors around two specific conical intersection geometries for the silaethylene and butadiene systems. Overall, no excitations between appropriate subspaces show qualitatively reasonable results while single excitations significantly improve ORMAS results relative to the CASSCF level in these particular systems. However, single excitation schemes do not always lead to the correct orbital subspaces, and as a result, seemingly smooth potential energy surfaces (PES) do not always result in smooth analytical gradients and NACs. In addition, while some of the single excitation ORMAS and CASSCF schemes have improper orbitals rotate into the active space, the schemes without excitations (even with more subspaces) do not exhibit this behavior.     

Communication: rate coefficients from quasiclassical trajectory calculations from the reverse reaction: The Mu + H2 reaction re-visited

In a previous paper [P. G. Jambrina et al., J. Chem. Phys. 135, 034310 (2011)] various calculations of the rate coefficient for the Mu + H(2) → MuH + H reaction were presented and compared to experiment. The widely used standard quasiclassical trajectory (QCT) method was shown to overestimate the rate coefficients by several orders of magnitude over the temperature range 200-1000 K. This was attributed to a major failure of that method to describe the correct threshold for the reaction owing to the large difference in zero-point energies (ZPE) of the reactant H(2) and product MuH (～0.32 eV). In this Communication we show that by performing standard QCT calculations for the reverse reaction and then applying detailed balance, the resulting rate coefficient is in very good agreement with the other computational results that respect the ZPE, (as well as with the experiment) but which are more demanding computationally.