The method of Gaussian weighted trajectories. V. On the 1GB procedure for polyatomic processes

Mode-specific multi-channel dynamics of the F- + CHD2Cl reaction on a global ab initio potential energy surface

We report a detailed quasiclassical trajectory study for the dynamics of the ground-state and CH/CD stretching-excited F^- + CHD₂Cl(v_CH/CD = 0, 1) → Cl^- + CHD₂F, HF + CD₂Cl^-, and DF + CHDCl^- S_N2, proton-, and deuteron-abstraction reactions using a full-dimensional global ab initio analytical potential energy surface. The simulations show that (a) CHD₂Cl(v_CH/CD = 1), especially for v_CH = 1, maintains its mode-specific excited character prior to interaction, (b) the S_N2 reaction is vibrationally mode-specific,

Energy transfer upon collision of selectively excited CO2 molecules: State-to-state cross sections and probabilities for modeling of atmospheres and gaseous flows

Carbon dioxide molecules can store and release tens of kcal/mol upon collisions, and such an energy transfer strongly influences the energy disposal and the chemical processes in gases under the extreme conditions typical of plasmas and hypersonic flows. Moreover, the energy transfer involving CO2 characterizes the global dynamics of the Earth-atmosphere system and the energy balance of other planetary atmospheres. Contemporary developments in kinetic modeling of gaseous mixtures are connected to progress in the description of the energy transfer, and, in particular, the attempts to include non-equilibrium effects require to consider state-specific energy exchanges. A systematic study of the state-to-state vibrational energy transfer in CO2 + CO2 collisions is the focus of the present work, aided by a theoretical and computational tool based on quasiclassical trajectory simulations and an accurate full-dimension model of the intermolecular interactions. In this model, the accuracy of the description of the intermolecular forces (that determine the probability of energy transfer in molecular collisions) is enhanced by explicit account of the specific effects of the distortion of the CO2 structure due to vibrations. Results show that these effects are important for the energy transfer probabilities. Moreover, the role of rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom is found to be dominant in the energy exchange, while the average contribution of translations, under the temperature and energy conditions considered, is negligible. Remarkable is the fact that the intramolecular energy transfer only involves stretching and bending, unless one of the colliding molecules has an initial symmetric stretching quantum number greater than a threshold value estimated to be equal to 7.

Reagent vibrational, rotational and isotopic effects on stereodynamics of the H + OCl → OH + Cl reaction

The quasi-classical trajectory method has been employed to investigate the initial vibrational and rotational effects of the title reaction on an improved ab initio potential energy surface for the 11A′ state. Meanwhile, isotopic effect has also been studied at collision energy of 19 kcal/mol. The product rotational alignment factor 〈P2(j′ • k)〉, angular distributions of P(ϕr), P(θr) and the generalized polarization dependent differential cross-sections have been calculated. The- results show that the reagent vibrational excitation generally strengthens the product alignment perpendicular to the reagent relative velocity vector k and affects the product scattering preference, and the rotational excitation has the same trend from j = 0 to 2 except for the higher excitation of j = 3. Further, the substitution of atom H with D leads to a stronger product alignment while changes some stereodynamical properties subtly.

Dynamics study of the OH + NH3 hydrogen abstraction reaction using QCT calculations based on an analytical potential energy surface

To understand the reactivity and mechanism of the OH + NH3 → H2O + NH2 gas-phase reaction, which evolves through wells in the entrance and exit channels, a detailed dynamics study was carried out using quasi-classical trajectory calculations. The calculations were performed on an analytical potential energy surface (PES) recently developed by our group, PES-2012 [Monge-Palacios et al. J. Chem. Phys. 138, 084305 (2013)]. Most of the available energy appeared as H2O product vibrational energy (54%), reproducing the only experimental evidence, while only the 21% of this energy appeared as NH2 co-product vibrational energy. Both products appeared with cold and broad rotational distributions. The excitation function (constant collision energy in the range 1.0-14.0 kcal mol(-1)) increases smoothly with energy, contrasting with the only theoretical information (reduced-dimensional quantum scattering calculations based on a simplified PES), which presented a peak at low collision energies, related to quantized states. Analysis of the individual reactive trajectories showed that different mechanisms operate depending on the collision energy. Thus, while at high energies (E(coll) ≥ 6 kcal mol(-1)) all trajectories are direct, at low energies about 20%-30% of trajectories are indirect, i.e., with the mediation of a trapping complex, mainly in the product well. Finally, the effect of the zero-point energy constraint on the dynamics properties was analyzed.

Three-state surface hopping calculations of acetaldehyde photodissociation to CH3 + HCO on ab initio potential surfaces

We report Trajectory Surface Hopping (TSH) calculations of CH3CHO photodissociation involving three electronic states, S1, T1, and S0, with a focus on the radical products CH3 + HCO, which can be formed from both T0 and S0. We use previously reported potential energy surfaces and spin-orbit couplings for T1 and S0 and report a new potential and spin-orbit coupling for S1 here. Roughly 32 000 trajectories are performed at energies corresponding to seven photolysis wavelengths between 372 and 230 nm. Motivated by recent experiments, we examine the branching ratio of the T1 to S0 pathways as a function of photolysis energy. We also present the relative translational energy and CH3 vibrational energy distributions from these pathways at a photolysis energy of 100 kcal mol(-1), formed from both the T1 and S0 potentials. As with standard quasiclassical trajectory calculations, violation of zero-point energy for products also occurs in TSH calculations. This is shown to be a serious issue for this branching ratio and one of several methods considered to deal with this issue is shown to give satisfactory results.

New insights into the semiclassical Wigner treatment of photodissociation dynamics

The semiclassical Wigner treatment of Brown and Heller [J. Chem. Phys. 1981, 75, 186] is applied to direct triatomic (or triatomic-like polyatomic) photodissociations with the aim of accurately predicting final state distributions at relatively low computational cost, and having available a powerful interpretative tool. For the first time, the treatment takes rotational motions into account. The proposed formulation closely parallels the quantum description as far as possible. An approximate version is proposed, which is still accurate while numerically much more efficient. In addition to being weighted by usual vibrational Wigner distributions, final phase space states appear to be weighted by new rotational Wigner distributions. These densities have remarkable structures clearly showing that classical trajectories most contributing to rotational state j are those reaching the products with a rotational angular momentum close to [j(j + 1)](1/2) (in ℏ units). The previous methods involve running trajectories from the reagent molecule onto the products. The alternative backward approach [L. Bonnet, J. Chem. Phys., 2010, 133, 174108], in which trajectories are run in the reverse direction, is shown to strongly improve the numerical efficiency of the most rigorous method in addition to being state-selective, and thus, ideally suited to the description of state-correlated distributions measured in velocity imaging experiments. The results obtained by means of the previous methods are compared with rigorous quantum results in the case of Guo's triatomic-like model of methyl iodide photodissociation [J. Chem. Phys., 1992, 96, 6629] and close agreement is found. In comparison, the standard method of Goursaud et al. [J. Chem. Phys., 1976, 65, 5453] is only semi-quantitative.

Gaussian binning of the vibrational distributions for the Cl + CH4(v(4/2) = 0, 1) → H + CH3Cl(n(1)n(2)n(3)n(4)n(5)n(6)) reactions

We test several binning techniques to obtain mode-specific final-state distributions for polyatomic reactions. Normal mode analysis is done after an exact transformation to the Eckart frame. Standard histogram binning (HB) and three different variants of the energy-based Gaussian binning (1GB) are employed to obtain the probabilities of the vibrational states. We consider the two major issues of the polyatomic quasiclassical product analysis, i.e., (1) rounding the classical action to the nearest integer can result in unphysical states and (2) the normal-mode analysis can break down for highly distorted geometries. We show that 1GB can handle issue 1 when the total vibrational energy is evaluated in the normal mode space using the harmonic approximation and both issues 1 and 2 can be solved when the total vibrational energy is calculated exactly in the Cartesian space. We found that anharmonicity in the quantized energy levels does not have a significant effect on the final-state distributions. Quasiclassical trajectory calculations are performed for the reactant ground-state and bending-excited Cl((2)P(3/2)) + CH(4)(v(4/2) = 0, 1) → H + CH(3)Cl reactions using an ab initio potential energy surface. The product analysis techniques are successfully applied to the CH(3)Cl product molecules and some qualitative features of the results are discussed.