Explicit correlation treatment of the potential energy surface of CO2 dimer
Résumé
We present an extensive study of the four-dimensional potential energy surface (4D-PES) of the
carbon dioxide dimer, (CO2)2. This PES is developed over the set of intermolecular coordinates.
The electronic computations are carried out at the explicitly correlated coupled cluster method with
single, double, and perturbative triple excitations [CCSD(T)-F12] level of theory in connection with
the augmented correlation-consistent aug-cc-pVTZ basis set. An analytic representation of the 4DPES
is derived. Our extensive calculations confirm that “Slipped Parallel” is the most stable form
and that the T-shaped structure corresponds to a transition state. Later on, this PES is employed for
the calculations of the vibrational energy levels of the dimer. Moreover, the temperature dependence
of the dimer second virial coefficient and of the first spectral moment of rototranslational collisioninduced
absorption spectrum is derived. For both quantities, a good agreement is found between our
values and the experimental data for a wide range of temperatures. This attests to the high quality
of our PES. Generally, our PES and results can be used for modeling CO2 supercritical fluidity
and examination of its role in planetary atmospheres. It can be also incorporated into dynamical
computations of CO2 capture and sequestration. This allows deep understanding, at the microscopic
level, of these processes.