Global potential energy hypersurface for dynamical studies of energy transfer in HF--HF collisions

The interaction energy of two HF molecules at 1332 individual points has been calculated with Moeller--Plesset (many--body) perturbation theory at the MP4-SDTQ level using a 6-311G** basis set. 293 of the points correspond to stretching of one HF molecule from its equilibrium geometry. No attempt was made to use a sufficiently fine grid to accurately describe the well region corresponding to hydrogen bonding. However, the location and minimum energy are consistent with experiment and other accurate theoretical results. An extensive global fit (rms error of 1 kcal/mol) is reported of 1319 points (below 10 eV of potential energy) using a modified London potential with corrections obtained using polynomials through four-body interactions. A model electrostatic potential represents the long-range interaction. In addition, the use of an expansion in products of three Legendre functions is discussed. It is shown that the latter approach, although accurately fitting the ab initio data, has difficulties interpolating in regions of the surface exhibiting diverse magnitudes of potential energy, and therefore must be used with caution. This surface should be useful for studies of T--V--R processes in this system