The intermolecular potential energy surface of Ar · HC1

Abstract

Anisotropic potential energy surfaces for Ar · HC1 are obtained by simultaneous least squares fitting to molecular beam spectra, rotational line broadening cross sections, second virial coefficients and molecular beam total differential cross sections. Several potentials are obtained which given good agreement with all these data and the sensitivity of the data to various aspects of the potential is investigated. For all potentials the equilibrium configuration is linear with the atomic arrangement Ar · H-C1. Several different ways of parameterizing the intermolecular potential are considered and it is concluded that the conventional multipole parameterization is not adequate for strongly anisotropic intermolecular potentials.