An ab initio study of the low-lying electronic states of S3

Accurate calculations of the low-lying singlet and triplet electronic states of thiozone, S-3, have been carried out using large multireference configuration interaction wave functions. Cuts of the full potential energy surfaces along the stretching and bending coordinates have been presented, together with the vertical excitation spectra. The strong experimentally observed absorption around 395 nm is assigned to the 1 B-1(2) state, which correlates to ground state products. Absorption at wavelengths shorter than 260 nm is predicted to lead to singlet excited state products, S-2 (a (1)Delta(g))+S(D-1). The spectroscopic properties of the X (3)Sigma(-)(g), a (1)Delta(g), and b (1)Sigma(+)(g) electronic states of the S-2 radical have also been accurately characterized in this work. The investigations of the low-lying electronic states were accompanied by accurate ground state coupled cluster calculations of the thermochemistry of both S-2 and S-3 using large correlation consistent basis sets with corrections for core-valence correlation, scalar relativity, and atomic spin-orbit effects. Resulting values for D-0(S-2+S) and Sigma D-0 for S-3 are predicted to be 61.3 and 162.7 kcal/mol, respectively, with conservative uncertainties of +/- 1 kcal/mol. Analogous calculations predict the C-2v-D-3h (open-cyclic) isomerization energy of S-3 to be 4.4 +/- 0.5 kcal/mol. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.