Vibrational angular momentum terms within the Watson Hamiltonian are often considered negligible or are approximated by the zeroth order term of an expansion of the inverse of the effective moment of inertia tensor. A multimode expansion of this tensor up to second order has been used to study the impact of first and second order terms on the vibrational transitions of N(2)H(2) and HBeH(2)BeH. Comparison with experimental data is provided. The expansion of the tensor can be exploited to introduce efficient prescreening techniques.

Abstract. This feature article discusses some selected aspects in the field of vibrational structure calculations based on vibrational self-consistent field, VSCF, and vibrational configuration interaction, VCI, theory. As the quality of such calculations depends strongly on the accuracy of the underlying multidimensional potential energy surface, PES, some techniques will be discussed to establish high-quality PESs in a fully automated manner. As an alternative to VCI theory multiconfiguration self-consistent field, VMCSCF, theory and in particular specific aspects concerning the integral evaluation relevant to both approaches will also be presented. Further aspects concern the efficient calculation of infrared intensities and Franck-Condon factors in vibronic transitions.(doi: 10.5562/cca2149)

A transformation of potential energy surfaces (PES) being represented by multi-mode expansions is introduced, which allows for the calculation of anharmonic vibrational spectra of any isotopologue from a single PES. This simplifies the analysis of infrared spectra due to significant CPU-time savings. An investigation of remaining deviations due to truncations and the so-called multi-level approximation is provided. The importance of vibrational-rotational couplings for small molecules is discussed in detail. In addition, an analysis is proposed, which provides information about the quality of the transformation prior to its execution. Benchmark calculations are provided for a set of small molecules.

The vibrational spectra of a series of small lithium fluoride clusters, i.e. (LiF)n, n = 2-10, were studied by vibrational configuration interaction (VCI) calculations relying on potential energy surfaces including three-mode coupling terms and being obtained from explicitly correlated local coupled cluster calculations. Due to the account for anharmonicity effects, the simulated spectra allow for a direct comparison with experimental data and may thus help to identify clusters in the experiments. Even structurally closely related clusters can clearly be distinguished by infrared spectroscopy. The largest system in this study required more than 1000 basis functions in the electronic structure calculations and more than 10(7) configurations in the vibrational structure calculations and became computationally feasible only due to a combination of different approximations and highly parallelized algorithms.

Azidoacetylene is a highly explosive substance, which has been synthesized and characterized for the first time quite recently [Banert et al., Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2012, 51, 7515]. As outlined in this work, the vibrational spectrum of azidoacetylene is dominated by strong couplings. For that reason, we have studied the vibrational spectrum of the title compound by gas phase measurements and high-level vibrational structure calculations beyond the harmonic approximation. Based on the interplay of theory and experiment, we were able to identify all fundamentals, strong Fermi resonances and intense overtones, which contribute to the spectrum.