Analytic Morse/long-range potential energy surfaces and predicted infrared spectra for CO–H2 dimer and frequency shifts of CO in (para-H2)N N = 1–20 clusters

Abstract

A five-dimensional ab initio potential energy surface (PES) for CO-H2 that explicitly incorporates dependence on the stretch coordinate of the CO monomer has been calculated. Analytic four-dimensional PESs are obtained by least-squares fitting vibrationally averaged interaction energies for vCO = 0 and 1 to the Morse/long-range potential function form. These fits to 30,206 points have root-mean-square (RMS) deviations of 0.087 and 0.082 cm(-1), and require only 196 parameters. The resulting vibrationally averaged PESs provide good representations of the experimental infrared data: for infrared transitions of para H2-CO and ortho H2-CO, the RMS discrepancies are only 0.007 and 0.023 cm(-1), which are almost in the same accuracy as those values of 0.010 and 0.018 cm(-1) obtained from full six-dimensional ab initio PESs of V12 [P. Jankowski, A. R. W. McKellar, and K. Szalewicz, Science 336, 1147 (2012)]. The calculated infrared band origin shift associated with the fundamental of CO is -0.179 cm(-1) for para H2-CO, which is the same value as that extrapolated experimental value, and slightly better than the value of -0.176 cm(-1) obtained from V12 PESs. With these potentials, the path integral Monte Carlo algorithm and a first order perturbation theory estimate are used to simulate the CO vibrational band origin frequency shifts of CO in (para H2)N-CO clusters for N = 1-20. The predicted vibrational frequency shifts are in excellent agreement with available experimental observations. Comparisons are also made between these model potentials.