Potential energy surface definition

Over the next few years, both the mid-infrared and the far-infrared spectra for Ar-HF and Ar-HCl were extended to numerous other bands and to other isotopic species (most importantly those containing deuterium). In 1992, Hutson [18, 39] combined all the available spectroscopic data to produce definitive potential energy surfaces that included both the angle dependence and the dependence on the HF/HCl monomer vibrational quantum number v... 

An IRC calculation examines the reaction path leading down from a transition structure on a potential energy surface. Such a calculation starts at the saddle point and follows the path in both directions from the transition state, optimizing the geometry of the molecular system at each point along the path. In this way, an IRC calculation definitively connects two minima on the potential energy surface by a path which passes through the transition state between them. 

Nonadiabatic transitions due to potential energy surface crossings definitely play cmcial roles in chemical dynamics. They (1) are important to comprehend the... 

Fig. 28. Schematic of potential energy surfaces of the vinoxy radical system. All energies are in eV, include zero-point energy, and are relative to CH2CHO (X2A//). Calculated energies are compared with experimentally-determined values in parentheses. Transition states 1—5 are labelled, along with the rate constant definitions from RRKM calculations. The solid potential curves to the left of vinoxy retain Cs symmetry. The avoided crossing (dotted lines) which forms TS5 arises when Cs symmetry is broken by out-of-plane motion. (From Osborn et al.67)...

Because the electronic distribution of a system is determined by I2 for a specific solution of Schrodinger s equation, definition (D1) allows us to determine molecular character directly from the form of the system s wavefunction f, corresponding to some definite point on the Born-Oppenheimer potential-energy surface.3... 

This expression constitutes the basis of current interpretations of electron transfer processes in biological systems. From Eq. (9), the functions Hg, (Q) and Hbb (Q) represent potential energy surfaces for the nuclear motion described by Xav and Xbw respectively, if the weak diagonal corrections Taa and T b are neglected. Then, the region Q Q where Xav and Xbw overlap significantly corresponds to the minimum of the intersection hypersurface between Hga (Q) and Hbb (Q)- Referring to definition (5), this implies ... 

If we examine a potential energy surface there are several features which play an important role in the interpretation of kinetic processes. These are minima (stable configurations of all the atoms), valleys (separate stable groups of atoms which we identify as reactants and products) and saddle points (transition states). However, before we give a more formal definition of these features we have to consider the coordinate system that is used. 

It may not at first be obvious that the Jahn-Teller theorem applies to transition states (40). The proof rests on the fact that the matrix element of the distortion gives a first-order change in energy and hence is linear in Q. In other words there must be a non-zero slope in some direction and this is incompatible with the definition of a transition point as a saddle point on the potential energy surface. 

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