Interpretation of the vibrational energy level structure of the astructural molecular ion H5+ and all of its deuterated isotopomers

Variational nuclear motion computations, employing an exact kinetic energy operator and two different potential energy surfaces, are performed to study the first 60 vibrational states of the molecular ion H-5(+) [H-2-H-H-2](+) and all of its deuterated isotopologues and isotopomers, altogether 12 species. Detailed investigation of the vibrational wavefunctions mostly results in physically intuitive labels not only for the fundamentals but also for the overtone and combination states computed. The torsional motion associated with the left and right diatomics appears to be well separated from the other vibrational degrees of freedom for all species. The unusual structure of the higher-lying bending states and the heavy mixing of the internal motions is partly due to the astructural character of all these molecular ions. The existence of distinct isotopomers in the H5-nDn+, n = 1-4 cases, in the energy range studied, is confirmed. Two rules determine the stability order of the isotopomers: first, when possible, H prefers to stay in the middle of the ions rather than at the sides, and, second, the isotopomer with a homonuclear diatomic at the side is always lower in energy. The large number of precise vibrational energies of the present study, as well as the detailed assignment of the states, should serve as benchmarks for future studies by more approximate nuclear-motion treatments, such as diffusion Monte Carlo and multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree. Published by AIP Publishing.