The origins of intra- and inter-molecular vibrational couplings: A case study of H2O-Ar on full and reduced-dimensional potential energy surface

The origin and strength of intra-and inter-molecular vibrational coupling is difficult to probe by direct experimental observations. However, explicitly including or not including some specific intramolecular vibrational modes to study intermolecular interaction provides a precise theoretical way to examine the effects of anharmonic coupling between modes. In this work, a full-dimension intra-and inter-molecular ab initio potential energy surface (PES) for H2O-Ar, which explicitly incorporates interdependence on the intramolecular (Q(1), Q(2), Q(3)) normal-mode coordinates of the H2O monomer, has been calculated. In addition, four analytic vibrational-quantum-state-specific PESs are obtained by least-squares fitting vibrationally averaged interaction energies for the (v(1), v(2), v(3)) = (0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 1), (1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0) states of H2O to the three-dimensional Morse/long-range potential function. Each vibrationally averaged PES fitted to 442 points has root-mean-square (rms) deviation smaller than 0.15 cm(-1), and required only 58 parameters. With the 3D PESs of H2O-Ar dimer system, we employed the combined radial discrete variable representation/angular finite basis representation method and Lanczos algorithm to calculate rovibrational energy levels. This showed that the resulting vibrationally averaged PESs provide good representations of the experimental infrared data, with rms discrepancies smaller than 0.02 cm(-1) for all three rotational branches of the asymmetric stretch fundamental transitions. The infrared band origin shifts associated with three fundamental bands of H2O in H2O-Ar complex are predicted for the first time and are found to be in good agreement with the (extrapolated) experimental values. Upon introduction of additional intramolecular degrees of freedom into the intermolecular potential energy surface, there is clear spectroscopic evidence of intra-and intermolecular vibrational couplings. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.