Harmonic approximation, potential energy

After the force constants and amplitudes of the ionic displacements are found, it is possible to draw the potential energy surface of the excited electronic state. In the harmonic approximation, this energy is described by the following expression ... 

The parabola —D + kx best approximates V (x) close to x = 0 and represents the harmonic oscillator potential energy (with the force constant k). The Morse oscillator is hard to... 

Our goal with this derivation is to find a simple and reasonably accurate solution to the energies and wavefunctions of atoms vibrating in a chemical bond. We will first show that the potential energy curve of a chemical bond can be crudely approximated by the harmonic oscillator potential energy jkx . Then we will turn once more to our friends at the 19th-century French Academy for the solution to the differential equation. The final step is relating the mathematical solution to the physical parameters of the molecule. A DERIVATION SUMMARY appears after Eq. 8.24. 

Harmonic analysis is an alternative approach to MD. The basic assumption is that the potential energy can be approximated by a sum of quadratic terms in displacements. 

Harmonic analysis (normal modes) at given temperature and curvature gives complete time behavior of the system in the harmonic limit [1, 2, 3]. Although the harmonic model may be incomplete because of the contribution of anharmonic terms to the potential energy, it is nevertheless of considerable importance because it serves as a first approximation for which the theory is highly developed. This model is also useful in SISM which uses harmonic analysis. 

Figure 7-9. Variation of the potential energy of the bonded interaction of two atoms with the distance between them. The solid line comes close to the experimental situation by using a Morse function the broken line represents the approximation by a harmonic potential.

The reason that does not change with isotopic substitution is that it refers to the bond length at the minimum of the potential energy curve (see Figure 1.13), and this curve, whether it refers to the harmonic oscillator approximation (Section 1.3.6) or an anharmonic oscillator (to be discussed in Section 6.1.3.2), does not change with isotopic substitution. Flowever, the vibrational energy levels within the potential energy curve, and therefore tq, are affected by isotopic substitution this is illustrated by the mass-dependence of the vibration frequency demonstrated by Equation (1.68). 

In accordance with the one-dimensional periodic orbit theory, any orbit contributing to g E) is supposedly constructed from closed classical orbits in the well and subbarrier imaginary-time trajectories. These two classes of trajectories are bordering on the turning points. For the present model the classical motion in the well is separable, and the harmonic approximation for classical motion is quite reasonable for more realistic potentials, if only relatively low energy levels are involved. 

Even for such a simple molecule, which 1 deliberately constrained to be lineiir and where I assumed that the harmonic approximation was applicable, the potential energy function will have cross-terms. 

Molecules possess discrete levels of rotational and vibrational energy. Transitions between vibrational levels occur by absorption of photons with frequencies v in the infrared range (wavelength 1-1000 p,m, wavenumbers 10,000-10 cm , energy differences 1240-1.24 meV). The C-0 stretch vibration, for example, is at 2143 cm . For small deviations of the atoms in a vibrating diatomic molecule from their equilibrium positions, the potential energy V(r) can be approximated by that of the harmonic oscillator ... 

The harmonic approximation is only valid for small deviations of the atoms from their equilibrium positions. The most obvious shortcoming of the harmonic potential is that the bond between two atoms can not break. With physically more realistic potentials, such as the Lennard-Jones or the Morse potential, the energy levels are no longer equally spaced and vibrational transitions with An > 1 are no longer forbidden. Such transitions are called overtones. The overtone of gaseous CO at 4260 cm (slightly less than 2 x 2143 = 4286 cm ) is an example. 

A harmonic approximation has usually been used for the description of the nuclear potential energy,... 

The potential energy U of the fast mode should be assumed to be harmonic, in a first approximation ... 

The reorganization of the solvent molecules can be expressed through the change in the slow polarization. Consider a small volume element AC of the solvent in the vicinity of the reactant it has a dipole moment m = Ps AC caused by the slow polarization, and its energy of interaction with the external field Eex caused by the reacting ion is —Ps Eex AC = —Ps D AC/eo, since Eex = D/eo- We take the polarization Ps as the relevant outer-sphere coordinate, and require an expression for the contribution AU of the volume element to the potential energy of the system. In the harmonic approximation this must be a second-order polynomial in Ps, and the linear term is the interaction with the external field, so that the equilibrium values of Ps in the absence of a field vanishes ... 

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