Molecular Hamiltonians

We have alluded to the comrection between the molecular PES and the spectroscopic Hamiltonian. These are two very different representations of the molecular Hamiltonian, yet both are supposed to describe the same molecular dynamics. Furthemrore, the PES often is obtained via ab initio quairtum mechanical calculations while the spectroscopic Hamiltonian is most often obtained by an empirical fit to an experimental spectrum. Is there a direct link between these two seemingly very different ways of apprehending the molecular Hamiltonian and dynamics And if so, how consistent are these two distinct ways of viewing the molecule ... 

At this point the reader may feel that we have done little in the way of explaining molecular synnnetry. All we have done is to state basic results, nonnally treated in introductory courses on quantum mechanics, connected with the fact that it is possible to find a complete set of simultaneous eigenfiinctions for two or more commuting operators. However, as we shall see in section Al.4.3.2. the fact that the molecular Hamiltonian //coimmites with and F is intimately coimected to the fact that //commutes with (or, equivalently, is invariant to) any rotation of the molecule about a space-fixed axis passing tlirough the centre of mass of the molecule. As stated above, an operation that leaves the Hamiltonian invariant is a symmetry operation of the Hamiltonian. The infinite set of all possible rotations of the... 

The tliree protons in PH are identical aud indistinguishable. Therefore the molecular Hamiltonian will conmuite with any operation that pemuites them, where such a pemiutation interchanges the space and spin coordinates of the protons. Although this is a rather obvious syimnetry, and a proof is hardly necessary, it can be proved by fomial algebra as done in chapter 6 of [1]. 

By definition, a synnnetry operation R connnutes with the molecular Hamiltonian //and so we can write the operator equation ... 

This definition causes the wavefiinction to move with the molecule as shown for the X direction in figure Al.4,3. The set of all translation synnnetry operations / constitiites a group which we call the translational group G. Because of the imifomhty of space, G is a synnnetry group of the molecular Hamiltonian //in that all its elements commute with // ... 

The translational linear momentum is conserved for an isolated molecule in field free space and, as we see below, this is closely related to the fact that the molecular Hamiltonian connmites with all... 

Initially, we neglect tenns depending on the electron spin and the nuclear spin / in the molecular Hamiltonian //. In this approximation, we can take the total angular momentum to be N(see (equation Al.4.1)) which results from the rotational motion of the nuclei and the orbital motion of the electrons. The components of. m the (X, Y, Z) axis system are given by ... 

Since space is isotropic, K (spatial) is a symmetry group of the molecular Hamiltonian v7in that all its elements conmuite with // ... 

If we allow for the tenns in the molecular Hamiltonian depending on the electron spin - (see chapter 7 of [1]), the resulting Hamiltonian no longer connnutes with the components of fVas given in (equation Al.4.125), but with the components of... 

Finally, we consider the complete molecular Hamiltonian which contains not only temis depending on the electron spin, but also temis depending on the nuclear spin / (see chapter 7 of [1]). This Hamiltonian conmiutes with the components of Pgiven in (equation Al.4,1). The diagonalization of the matrix representation of the complete molecular Hamiltonian proceeds as described in section Al.4,1.1. The theory of rotational synnnetry is an extensive subject and we have only scratched the surface here. A relatively new book, which is concemed with molecules, is by Zare [6] (see [7] for the solutions to all the problems in [6] and a list of the errors). This book describes, for example, the method for obtaining the fimctioiis ... 

The Hamiltonian considered above, which connmites with E, involves the electromagnetic forces between the nuclei and electrons. However, there is another force between particles, the weak interaction force, that is not invariant to inversion. The weak charged current mteraction force is responsible for the beta decay of nuclei, and the related weak neutral current interaction force has an effect in atomic and molecular systems. If we include this force between the nuclei and electrons in the molecular Hamiltonian (as we should because of electroweak unification) then the Hamiltonian will not conuuiite with , and states of opposite parity will be mixed. However, the effect of the weak neutral current interaction force is mcredibly small (and it is a very short range force), although its effect has been detected in extremely precise experiments on atoms (see, for... 

Consider a system governed by Hamiltonian H = H + where is the bare molecular Hamiltonian and... 

The first classical trajectory study of iinimoleciilar decomposition and intramolecular motion for realistic anhannonic molecular Hamiltonians was perfonned by Bunker [12,13], Both intrinsic RRKM and non-RRKM dynamics was observed in these studies. Since this pioneering work, there have been numerous additional studies [9,k7,30,M,M, ai d from which two distinct types of intramolecular motion, chaotic and quasiperiodic [14], have been identified. Both are depicted in figure A3,12,7. Chaotic vibrational motion is not regular as predicted by tire nonnal-mode model and, instead, there is energy transfer between the modes. If all the modes of the molecule participate in the chaotic motion and energy flow is sufficiently rapid, an initial microcanonical ensemble is maintained as the molecule dissociates and RRKM behaviour is observed [9], For non-random excitation initial apparent non-RRKM behaviour is observed, but at longer times a microcanonical ensemble of states is fonned and the probability of decomposition becomes that of RRKM theory. 

Robb, Bemaidi, and Olivucci (RBO) [37] developed a method based on the idea that a conical intersection can be found if one moves in a plane defined by two vectors xi and X2, defined in the adiabatic basis of the molecular Hamiltonian H. The direction of Xi corresponds to the gradient difference... 

Let us examine a special but more practical case where the total molecular Hamiltonian, H, can be separated to an electronic part, W,.(r,s Ro), as is the case in the usual BO approximation. Consequendy, the total molecular wave function fl(R, i,r,s) is given by the product of a nuclear wave function X uc(R, i) and an electronic wave function v / (r, s Ro). We may then talk separately about the permutational properties of the subsystem consisting of electrons, and the subsystemfs) formed of identical nuclei. Thus, the following commutative laws Pe,Hg =0 and =0 must be satisfied X =... 

The first step in our quantum-mechanical calculation is the construction of an appropriate molecular Hamiltonian. For a weak constant static field E we have... 

The mixing has nothing to do with the possibility of any molecules populating the term, which is typically 12,000 cm" above the ground state term. The population of such a term is of the order -12000/200 room temperature kT 200 cm" at 300 K), which is absolutely negligible. The mixing arises because a description of the molecular Hamiltonian in terms of Eq. (5.14) is incomplete and should be replaced with Eq. (5.15). 

Therefore in the presence of an external electric field of strength Ez in the -direction, the total nonrelativistic molecular Hamiltonian is... 

In this admittedly extremely brief and hermetic summary of the quantum mechanics of static molecules, the key issue for us is that Equations 7.6 and 7.10 imply that, provided we know what the static molecular Hamiltonian H looks like and provided we can write down any set l, we can always obtain all the molecular energies E (and therefore the molecular spectrum) by computing all n2 terms... 

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