Use of complex configuration interaction calculations and the stationary principle for the description of metastable electronic states of HCl-

Abstract

The complex multireference single- and double-excitation configuration interaction method has been employed to compute potential curves for the anion of the hydrogen chloride molecule. First, conventional CI calculations with real basis functions have been carried out to determine the potential curves of both HCl and its anion over a large range of internuclear distance. It is shown that adding basis functions with very small exponents leads to sharply avoided crossings for the HCl- potentials that greatly complicate the search for resonance states thought to be responsible for features observed in electron collision experiments. By limiting the number of such diffuse-type functions it is possible to describe resonance states at a highly correlated level and still account for their interaction with the continuum in which they are embedded. In the present study of the HCl- anion the complex basis function technique of Moiseyev-Corcoran and McCurdy-Resigno is employed to calculate the energy positions and line-widths of the resonance states. Two states of 2σ+ symmetry are calculated which have potentials that have significantly different shapes than that of the neutral ground state and thus contribute to the cross section for vibrational excitation of the neutral HCl molecule induced by low-energy electron collisions. The lower of these (1 2σ+) correlates smoothly with the bound anionic ground state at large internuclear distances and is seen to be responsible for the sharp peaks observed in the low-energy region of the spectrum. The upper state (32σ+) has a much larger bond length and is assigned to the broad bands observed with a maximum in the 2.5-3.0 eV range. The present calculations thus stand in contradiction to earlier claims that the above peaks are caused by so-called virtual states without a definite autoionization lifetime. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.