Anharmonicity equilibria

Hollenstein H, Marquardt R, Quack M and Suhm M A 1994 Dipole moment function and equilibrium structure of methane In an analytical, anharmonic nine-dimenslonal potential surface related to experimental rotational constants and transition moments by quantum Monte Carlo calculations J. Chem. Phys. 101 3588-602... 

Vibrational energy, which is associated with the alternate extension and compression of die chemical bonds. For small displacements from the low-temperature equilibrium distance, the vibrational properties are those of simple harmonic motion, but at higher levels of vibrational energy, an anharmonic effect appears which plays an important role in the way in which atoms separate from tire molecule. The vibrational energy of a molecule is described in tire quantum theory by the equation... 

Thus far we have discussed the direct mechanism of dissipation, when the reaction coordinate is coupled directly to the continuous spectrum of the bath degrees of freedom. For chemical reactions this situation is rather rare, since low-frequency acoustic phonon modes have much larger wavelengths than the size of the reaction complex, and so they cannot cause a considerable relative displacement of the reactants. The direct mechanism may play an essential role in long-distance electron transfer in dielectric media, when the reorganization energy is created by displacement of equilibrium positions of low-frequency polarization phonons. Another cause of friction may be anharmonicity of solids which leads to multiphonon processes. In particular, the Raman processes may provide small energy losses. 

The observation of the departure from cubic symmetry above Tm co-incident with the appearance of the central peak scattering serves to resolve the conflict between dynamic and lattice strain models. The departure from cubic symmetry may be attributed to a shift in the atomic equilibrium position associated with the soft-mode anharmonicity. In such a picture, the central peak then becomes the precusor to a Bragg reflection for the new structure. 

The anharmonic modes for both the a symmetric and 67 asymmetric CH stretching vibrations have been explored. In order to perform a reasonable anharmonic treatment, we had to take into account the stretching of the bonds to larger elongations than for the harmonic description where displacements can be confined close to the equilibrium geometry. Consequently, correlation effects were included in the determination of the potential surface. The electronic calculations were carried out at the MP2 level, which insures a good description of the CH bond potential towards dissociation. A double zeta... 

The model fundamental to all analyses of vibrational motion requires that the atoms in the system oscillate with small amplitude about some defined set of equilibrium positions. The Hamiltonian describing this motion is customarily taken to be quadratic in the atomic displacements, hence in principle a set of normal modes can be found in terms of these normal modes both the kinetic energy and the potential energy of the system are diagonal. The interaction of the system with electromagnetic radiation, i.e. excitation of specific normal modes of vibration, is then governed by selection rules which depend on features of the microscopic symmetry. It is well known that this model can be worked out in detail for small molecules and for crystalline solids. In some very favorable simple cases the effects of anharmonicity can be accounted for, provided they are not too large. 

Here, AT is a constant, f is the incoming intensity, R is the distance of the scattered wave from the molecule (in practical terms, it is the distance between the scattering center and the point of observation), i and j are the labels of atoms in the jV-atomic molecule, g contains the electron scattering amplitudes and phases of atoms, 5 is a simple function of the scattering angle and the electron wavelength, I is the mean vibrational amplitude of a pair of nuclei, r is the intemuclear distance r is the equilibrium intemuclear distance and is an effective intemuclear distance), and k is an asymmetry parameter related to anharmonicity of the vibration of a pair of nuclei. 

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