Electric properties of hydrogen iodide: Reexamination of correlation and relativistic effects

Abstract

The electric dipole moment and the static dipole polarizability of the hydrogen iodide molecule were studied using sophisticated correlated and relativistic methods. Both scalar and spin–orbit relativistic effects were carefully accounted for. We conclude that the large differences between the theoretical and experimental dipole moment, the dipole moment derivative and the polarizability cannot be reconciled by improved account of electron correlation and relativistic effects. The most striking difference between theory and experiment is observed for the polarizability anisotropy. We believe that experimental data, namely the experimental dipole moment (the most recent value is 0.176 au as compared to our best theoretical estimate, 0.154±0.003 au), the parallel polarizability (44.4 and 38.47±0.05 au) and the anisotropy (11.4 and 2.33±0.05 au) must be inaccurate. Experimental and theoretical perpendicular polarizability components (33.0 and 36.14±0.05 au,) and the mean polarizability (36.8 and 36.92±0.05 au) agree better. Our vibrationally corrected relativistic CCSD(T) results represent the most sophisticated predictions of electric properties of HI obtained so far.