Chemistry Commons^™

Towards A Global Model Of Spin-Orbit Coupling In The Halocarbenes, Silver Nyambo, Cyrus Karshenas, Scott A. Reid, Phalgun Lolur, Richard Dawes

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

We report a global analysis of spin-orbit coupling in the mono-halocarbenes, CH(D)X, where X = Cl, Br, and I. These are model systems for examining carbene singlet-triplet energy gaps and spin-orbit coupling. Over the past decade, rich data sets collected using single vibronic level emission spectroscopy and stimulated emission pumping spectroscopy have yielded much information on the ground vibrational level structure and clearly demonstrated the presence of perturbations involving the low-lying triplet state. To model these interactions globally, we compare two approaches. First, we employ a diabatic treatment of the spin-orbit coupling, where the coupling matrix elements are written in …