Global analytical ab initio ground-state potential energy surface for the C(1D)+H2 reactive system.

A new global ab initio potential energy surface (called ZMB-a) for the 1¹A' state of the C(¹D)+H₂ reactive system has been constructed. This is based upon ab initio calculations using the internally contracted multireference configuration interaction approach with the aug-cc-pVQZ basis set, performed at about 6300 symmetry unique geometries. Accurate analytical fits are generated using many-body expansions with the permutationally invariant polynomials, except that the fit of the deep well region is taken from our previous fit. The ZMB-a surface is unique in the accurate description of the regions around conical intersections (CIs) and of van der Waals (vdW) interactions. The CIs between the 1¹A' and 2¹A' states cause two kinds of barriers on the ZMB-a surface: one is in the linear H-CH dissociation direction with a barrier height of 9.07 kcal/mol, which is much higher than those on the surfaces reported before; the other is in the C(¹D) collinearly attacking H₂ direction with a barrier height of 12.39 kcal/mol. The ZMB-a surface basically reproduces our ab initio calculations in the vdW interaction regions, and supports a linear C-HH vdW complex in the entrance channel, and two vdW complexes in the exit channel, at linear CH-H and HC-H geometries, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]