Harmonic oscillator, potential energy curve

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). 

Figure 6.4 Potential energy curve and energy levels for a diatomic molecule behaving as an anharmonic oscillator compared with those for a harmonic oscillator (dashed curve)...

In the general case R denotes a set of coordinates, and Ui(R) and Uf (R) are potential energy surfaces with a high dimension. However, the essential features can be understood from the simplest case, which is that of a diatomic molecule that loses one electron. Then Ui(R) is the potential energy curve for the ground state of the molecule, and Uf(R) that of the ion (see Fig. 19.2). If the ion is stable, which will be true for outer-sphere electron-transfer reactions, Uf(R) has a stable minimum, and its general shape will be similar to that of Ui(R). We can then apply the harmonic approximation to both states, so that the nuclear Hamiltonians Hi and Hf that correspond to Ui and Uf are sums of harmonic oscillator terms. To simplify the mathematics further, we make two additional assumptions ... 

The shapes of the absorption band associated with the intensities of vibrational transitions, are sensitive functions of the equilibrium bond length, about which approximately harmonic vibrational oscillations occur. Potential energy curves for a diatomic molecule (Figure 4.2), are commonly represented by Morse equation,... 

The potential energy curve of the dissociating harmonic oscillators is taken to be that of a truncated harmonic oscillator with a finite number of equally spaced energy levels such that level N is the last bound level. The dissociation or activation energy for the reaction is then EN+1 = hv(N + 1). This potential energy curve is shown in Figure 1. 

Fig. 1. Potential energy curve for the truncated harmonic oscillator.

Figure 1-6 Potential energy curve for a diatomic molecule. Solid line indicates a Morse potential that approximates the actual potential. Broken line is a parabolic potential for a harmonic oscillator. De and D0 are the theoretical and spectroscopic dissociation energies, respectively.

Figure 6.22. Potential energy curve for a harmonic oscillator, and the first few vibrational levels.

An Excel spreadsheet comparing potential energy curves calculated for HCl for Morse and harmonic oscillator models with ab initio quantum mechanical results obtained with the program Gaussian. The example illustrates the use of cell formulas and some of the text Format options, such as bold and italic fonts of various sizes, subscripts and superscripts, and Greek and other special characters. 

Calculation of Morse and Harmonic Oscillator Potential Energy Curves... 

Potential Functions. Near the minimum in the potential-energy curve of a dia-tomie moleeule, the harmonic-oscillator model is usually quite good. Therefore the foree constant h can be calculated from the relation... 

The principles of photoluminescence applied to solid oxide surfaces can be most easily understood by assuming some simplifications. For example, we can start by considering the Morse potential energy curves (Fig. 1) related to an ion pair such as M-+0-, taken as a harmonic oscillator to represent an oxide, typically an alkaline earth oxide. The absorption of light close to the fundamental absorption edge of this oxide leads to the excitation of an electron in the oxide ion followed by a charge-transfer process to create an exciton (an electron-hole pair), which is essentially... 

This review shows how the photochemistry of ketones can be rationalized through a single model, the Tunnel Effect Theory (TET), which treats reactions of ketones as radiationless transitions from reactant to product potential energy curves (PEC). Two critical approximations are involved in the development of this theory (i) the representation of reactants and products as diatomic harmonic oscillators of appropriate reduced masses and force constants (ii) the definition of a unidimensional reaction coordinate (RC) as the sum of the reactant and product bond distensions to the transition state. Within these approximations, TET is used to calculate the reactivity parameters of the most important photoreactions of ketones, using only a partially adjustable parameter, whose physical meaning is well understood and which admits only predictable variations. 

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