Reduced-Dimensionality Semiclassical Transition State Theory: Application to Hydrogen Atom Abstraction and Exchange Reactions of Hydrocarbons

Abstract

Quantum mechanical methods for calculating rate constants are often intractable for reactions involving many atoms. Semiclassical transition state theory (SCTST) offers computational advantages over these methods but nonetheless scales exponentially with the number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) of the system. Here we present a method with more favorable scaling, reduced-dimensionality SCTST (RD SCTST), that treats only a subset of DOFs of the system explicitly. We apply it to three H abstraction and exchange reactions for which two-dimensional potential energy surfaces (PESs) have previously been constructed and evaluated using RD quantum scattering calculations. We differentiated these PESs to calculate harmonic frequencies and anharmonic constants, which were then used to calculate cumulative reaction probabilities and rate constants by RD SCTST. This method yielded rate constants in good agreement with quantum scattering results. Notably, it performed well for a heavy-light-heavy reaction, even though it does not explicitly account for corner-cutting effects. Recent extensions to SCTST that improve its treatment of deep tunneling were also evaluated within the reduced-dimensionality framework. The success of RD SCTST in this study suggests its potential applicability to larger systems.