An accurate, global, ab initio potential energy surface for the H3+ molecule

A new global, ground-state, Born-Oppenheimer surface is presented for the H-3(+) system. The energy switching approach has been used to combine different functional forms for three different regimes: a spectroscopic expansion at low energy, a Sorbie-Murrell function at high energy and known long-range terms combined with accurate diatomic potentials at large separations. At low energies we have used the ultra high accuracy ab initio data of Cencek et al. (1998, J. chem. Phys., 108, 2831). At intermediate energy we have calculated 134 new ab initio energies using a high accuracy, explicitly correlated procedure. The ab initio data of Schinke et al. (1980, J. chem. Phys., 72, 3909) has been used to constrain the high energy region. Two fits are presented which differ somewhat in their behaviour at energies over 45 000 cm(-1) above the H-3(+) minimum. Below this energy, the fits reproduce each set of ab initio data close to their intrinsic accuracy. The ground state surface should provide a suitable starting point for renewed studies of the near-threshold photodissociation spectrum originally reported by Carrington et al. (1982, Molec. Phys., 45, 753).