A global potential energy surface for ArH2.

We describe an analytic representation of the ArH2 potential energy surface which well reproduces the results of extensive ab initio electronic structure calculations. We also give an empirical modification of the function designed to improve agreement with experimental estimates of the van der Waals minimum. The analytic representation smoothly interpolates between the H+H and strong bonding H2 limits. In the fitting process, an accurate reproduction of regions of the potential expected to be important for high temperature (∼3000 K) collision processes is emphasized. Overall, the analytic representation well reproduces the anisotropy and H2 bond length dependence of the input data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]