Stretching of hydrogen-bonded OH in the lowest singlet excited electronic state of water dimer

The lowest singlet excited electronic state of water monomer in the gas phase is strictly dissociative along a OH stretch coordinate but changes its nature when the stretched OH moiety is hydrogen bonded to a neighboring water molecule. This work extends previous exploration of the water dimer excited singlet potential-energy surface, using computational methods that are reliable even at geometries well removed from the ground-state equilibrium. First, the hydrogen-bonded OH moiety is stretched far enough to establish the existence of a barrier that is sufficient to support a quasibound vibrational state of the OH oscillator near the Franck-Condon region. Second, the constraint of an icelike structure is relaxed, and it is found that a substantial fraction of liquidlike structures also supports a quasibound vibrational state. These potential-energy explorations on stretching of the hydrogen-bonded OH moiety in a water dimer are discussed as a model for understanding the initial dynamics upon excitation into the lowest excited singlet state of condensed water. The possibility is raised that the excited-state lifetime may be long enough to allow for exciton migration, which would provide a mechanism for energy transport in condensed water phases.