Full-dimensional ab initio potential energy surface and vibrational configuration interaction calculations for vinyl

The potential energy landscape and two permutationally invariant, full-dimensional ab initio-based potential energy surfaces (PESs) for the doublet vinyl radical, C2H3, are described. The first of the two surfaces, denoted as PES/S, describes the equivalent CH2CH global minimum and the saddle point separating them, planar and nonplanar H-atom migration saddle points, a methylcarbyne local minimum that is due to a Jahn-Teller conical intersection, and the saddle point connecting it with the global minimum. The second PES, denoted PES/D, contains all stationary points of PES/S and in addition describes dissociation to C2H2+H fragments, including the saddle point to dissociation along a least-energy path. The surfaces are least-squares fits to electronic energies obtained with use of the spin-restricted coupled cluster singles and doubles with perturbative treatment of triples method and augmented correlation consistent polarized valence triple zeta basis sets, using permutationally invariant polynomials in Morse variables and a many-body expansion. PES/S is a fit to roughly 34 000 and PES/D to roughly 50 000 electronic structure energies. PES/S is used in full-dimensional, vibrational configuration interaction calculations of the vinyl zero-point energy and fundamental vibrational energies, which are compared to recent experiments.