ExoMol molecular line lists - XIII. the spectrum of CaO

Abstract

An accurate line list for calcium oxide is presented covering transitions between all bound ro-vibronic levels from the five lowest electronic states X 1 Σ +, A' 1 Π, A 1 Σ+, a3Π, and b3Σ+. The ro-vibronic energies and corresponding wavefunctions were obtained by solving the fully coupled Schrödinger equation. Ab initio potential energy, spin-orbit, and electronic angular momentum curves were refined by fitting to the experimental frequencies and experimentally derived energies available in the literature. Using our refined model we could (1) reassign the vibronic states for a large portion of the experimentally derived energies (van Groenendael A., Tudorie M., Focsa C., Pinchemel B., Bernath P. F., 2005, J. Mol. Spectrosc., 234, 255), (2) extended this list of energies to J=61-118 and (3) suggest a new description of the resonances from the A 1 Σ-1 Σ+ system. We used high level ab initio electric dipole moments reported previously (Khalil H., Brites V., Le Quere F., Leonard C., 2011, Chem. Phys., 386, 50) to compute the Einstein A coefficients. Our work is the first fully coupled description of this system. Our line list is the most complete catalogue of spectroscopic transitions available for 40Ca16O and is applicable for temperatures up to at least 5000 K. CaO has yet to be observed astronomically but its transitions are characterized by being particularly strong which should facilitate its detection. The CaO line list is made available in an electronic form as supplementary data to this article and at www.exomol.com.