Excited electronic states of the methyl radical. Ab initio molecular orbital study of geometries, excitation energies and vibronic spectra Original Research Article

The geometries, vibrational frequencies and vertical and adiabatic excitation energies of the excited valence and Rydberg 3s, 3p, 3d, and 4s electronic states of CH3 have been studied using ab initio molecular orbital multiconfigurational SCF (CASSCF), internally contracted multireference configuration interaction (MRCI) and equation-of-motion coupled cluster (EOM-CCSD) methods. The vibronic spectra are determined through the calculation of Franck-Condon factors. Close agreement between theory and experiment has been found for the excitation energies, vibrational frequencies and vibronic spectra. The adiabatic excitation energies of the Rydberg 3s B̃ 2A′1 and 3p 2 2A″2 states are calculated to be 46435 and 60065 cm−1 compared to the experimental values of 46300 and 59972 cm−1, respectively. The valence 2A″ excited state of CH3 has been found to have a pyramidal geometry within Cs symmetry and to be adiabatically by 97 kcal/mol higher in energy than the ground state. The 2A″ state is predicted to be stable by 9 and 13 kcal/mol with respect to H2 and H elimination.