Paolo Barletta

DVR3D: a program suite for the calculation of rotation-vibration spectra of triatomic molecules

The DVR3D program suite calculates energy levels, wavefunctions, and where appropriate dipole transition moments, for rotating and vibrating triatomic molecules. Potential energy and, where necessary, dipole surfaces must be provided. Expectation values of geometrically defined functions can be calculated, a feature which is particularly useful for fitting potential energy surfaces. The programs use an exact (within the Born–Oppenheimer approximation) Hamiltonian and offer a choice of Jacobi or Radau internal coordinates and several body-fixed axes. Rotationally excited states are treated using an efficient two-step algorithm. The programs uses a Discrete Variable Representation (DVR) based on Gauss–Jacobi and Gauss–Laguerre quadrature for all 3 internal coordinates and thus yields a fully point-wise representation of the wavefunctions. The vibrational step uses successive diagonalisation and truncation which is implemented for a number of possible coordinate orderings. The rotational, expectation value and transition dipole programs exploit the savings offered by performing integrals on a DVR grid. The new version has been rewritten in FORTRAN 90 to exploit the dynamic array allocations and the algorithm for dipole and spectra calculations have been substantially improved. New modules allow the z-axis to be embedded perpendicular to the plane of the molecule and for the calculation of expectation values.

CVRQD ab initio ground-state adiabatic potential energy surfaces for the water molecule.

The high accuracy ab initio adiabatic potential energy surfaces (PESs) of the ground electronic state of the water molecule, determined originally by Polyansky et al. [Science 299, 539 (2003)] and called CVRQD, are extended and carefully characterized and analyzed. The CVRQD potential energy surfaces are obtained from extrapolation to the complete basis set of nearly full configuration interaction valence-only electronic structure computations, augmented by core, relativistic, quantum electrodynamics, and diagonal Born-Oppenheimer corrections. We also report ab initio calculations of several quantities characterizing the CVRQD PESs, including equilibrium and vibrationally averaged (0 K) structures, harmonic and anharmonic force fields, harmonic vibrational frequencies, vibrational fundamentals, and zero-point energies. They can be considered as the best ab initio estimates of these quantities available today. Results of first-principles computations on the rovibrational energy levels of several isotopologues of the water molecule are also presented, based on the CVRQD PESs and the use of variational nuclear motion calculations employing an exact kinetic energy operator given in orthogonal internal coordinates. The variational nuclear motion calculations also include a simplified treatment of nonadiabatic effects. This sophisticated procedure to compute rovibrational energy levels reproduces all the known rovibrational levels of the water isotopologues considered, H(2) (16)O, H(2) (17)O, H(2) (18)O, and D(2) (16)O, to better than 1 cm(-1) on average. Finally, prospects for further improvement of the ground-state adiabatic ab initio PESs of water are discussed.

Spectroscopically determined potential energy surface of H216O up to 25 000 cm−1

A potential energy surface for the major isotopomer of water is constructed by fitting to observed vibration–rotation energy levels of the system using the exact kinetic energy operator nuclear motion program DVR3D. The starting point for the fit is the ab initio Born–Oppenheimer surface of Partridge and Schwenke [J. Chem. Phys. 106, 4618 (1997)] and corrections to it: both one- and two-electron relativistic effects, a correction to the height of the barrier to linearity, allowance for the Lamb shift and the inclusion of both adiabatic and nonadiabatic non-Born–Oppenheimer corrections. Fits are made by scaling the starting potential by a morphing function, the parameters of which are optimized. Two fitted potentials are presented which only differ significantly in their treatment of rotational nonadiabatic effects. Energy levels up to 25 468 cm−1 with J=0, 2, and 5 are fitted with only 20 parameters. The resulting potentials predict experimentally known levels with J⩽10 with a standard deviation of 0.1 cm...

Variational description of the helium trimer using correlated hyperspherical harmonic basis functions

A variational wave function constructed with correlated hyperspherical harmonic functions is used to describe the Helium trimer. This system is known to have a deep bound state. In addition, different potential models predict the existence of a shallow excited state that has been identified as an Efimov state. Using the Rayleigh-Ritz variational principle, the energies and wave functions of both bound states have been obtained by solving a generalized eigenvalue problem. The introduction of a suitable correlation factor reduces considerably the dimension of the basis needed to accurately describe the structure of the system. The most recent helium-helium interactions have been investigated.

Two-electron relativistic corrections to the potential energy surface and vibration-rotation levels of water

Abstract Two-electron relativistic corrections to the ground-state electronic energy of water are determined as a function of geometry at over 300 points. The corrections include the two-electron Darwin term (D2) of the Coulomb–Pauli Hamiltonian, obtained at the cc-pVQZ CCSD(T) level of theory, as well as the Gaunt and Breit corrections, calculated perturbationally using four-component fully variational Dirac–Hartree–Fock (DHF) wavefunctions and two different basis sets. Based on the calculated energy points, fitted relativistic correction surfaces are constructed. These surfaces are used with a high-accuracy ab initio nonrelativistic Born–Oppenheimer (BO) potential energy hypersurface to calculate vibrational band origins and rotational term values for H 2 16 O . The calculations suggest that these two-electron relativistic corrections, which go beyond the usual kinetic relativistic effects and which have so far been neglected in rovibrational calculations on light many-electron molecular systems, have a substantial influence on the rotation–vibration levels of water. The three effects considered have markedly different characteristics for the stretching and bending levels, which often leads to fortuitous cancellation of errors. The effect of the Breit interaction on the rovibrational levels is intermediate between the effect of the kinetic relativistic correction and that of the one-electron Lamb-shift effect.

Ab initio rotation-vibration energy levels of triatomics to spectroscopic accuracy

The factors that need to be taken into account to achieve spectroscopic accuracy for triatomic molecules are considered focusing on H3+ and water as examples. The magnitude of the adiabatic and non-adiabatic corrections to the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is illustrated for both molecules, and methods of including them ab initio are discussed. Electronic relativistic effects are not important for H3+, but are for water for which the magnitude of the various effects is discussed. For H3+ inclusion of rotational non-adiabatic effects means that levels can be generated to an accuracy approaching 0.01 cm(-1); for water the error is still dominated by the error in the correlation energy in the electronic structure calculation. Prospects for improving this aspect of the calculation are discussed.

The Helium Trimer with Soft-Core Potentials

The helium trimer is studied using two- and three-body soft-core potentials. Realistic helium–helium potentials present an extremely strong short-range repulsion and support a single, very shallow, bound state. The description of systems with more than two helium atoms is difficult due to the very large cancellation between kinetic and potential energy. We analyze the possibility of describing the three helium system in the ultracold regime using a gaussian representation of a widely used realistic potential, the LM2M2 interaction. However, in order to describe correctly the trimer ground state a three-body force has to be added to the gaussian interaction. With this potential model the two bound states of the trimer and the low energy scattering helium–dimer phase shifts obtained with the LM2M2 potential are well reproduced.

Integral relations for three-body continuum states with the adiabatic expansion

The application of the hyperspherical adiabatic expansion to describe three-body scattering states suffers from the problem of very slow convergence. Contrary to what happens for bound states, a huge number of hyper-radial equations has to be solved, and even if done, the extraction of the scattering amplitude is problematic. In this Letter we show how to obtain accurate scattering phase shifts using the hyperspherical adiabatic expansion. To this aim two integral relations, derived from the Kohn variational principle, are used. The convergence of this procedure is as fast as for bound states.

Resonant states of H3+ and D2H+

Vibrational resonances for H(3) (+) and D(2)H(+), as well as H(3) (+) at J=3, are calculated using a complex absorbing potential (CAP) method with an automated procedure to find stability points in the complex plane. Two different CAP functional forms and different CAP extents are used to analyze the consistency of the results. Calculations are performed using discrete variable representation continuum basis elements calculated to high levels of accuracy by diagonalizing large, dense, Hamiltonian matrices. For D(2)H(+), two energy regions are analyzed: the one where D(2)+H(+) is the only dissociation product and the one where HD+D(+) can also be formed. Branching ratios are obtained in the latter case by using different CAPs. It is shown that H(3) (+) and D(2)H(+) support some narrow Feshbach-type resonances but that higher angular momentum states must be studied to model the pre-dissociation spectrum recorded by Carrington and co-workers [J. Chem. Phys. 98, 1073 (1993)].

Towards sympathetic cooling of large molecules: cold collisions between benzene and rare gas atoms

This paper reports on calculations of collisional cross sections for the complexes X–C6H6 (X=3He, 4He, Ne) at temperatures in the range 1 μK–10 K and shows that relatively large cross sections in the 103–105 A2 range are available for collisional cooling. Both elastic and inelastic processes are considered in this temperature range. The calculations suggest that sympathetically cooling benzene to microkelvin temperatures is feasible using these co-trapped rare gas atoms in an optical trap.