Rydberg states of carbon dioxide and carbon disulfide

The electronic absorption spectra of carbon dioxide and carbon disulfide have been reexamined. Model potential calculations have been used to calculate the energies of excited states in Rydberg approximation, and (npσ) and (npπ) Rydberg series have been assigned. For both molecules, the lowest excited ¹Π_g and ¹Π_u states are identified as Rydberg states. The lowest ${}^1\text{Σ}{}_{\mathrm{u}}{}^{\mathrm{+}}$ state is mainly Rydberg for CO₂, but contains some valence character for CS₂, There is no evidence for transitions to additional valence states of these symmetries.It is shown that $\text{LCAO}\text{MO}$ predictions about excited states can be misleading because of near-linear dependencies which arise in multicenter expansions. A consideration of the united atom orbitals for CO₂ and CS₂ predicts that there should be only the number of low-energy excited states which are found from the spectral analysis.