Physics Commons^™

Concerted Hydrogen-Bond Breaking By Quantum Tunneling In The Water Hexamer Prism, Jeremy O. Richardson, Cristobal Perez, Simon Lobsiger, Adam A. Reid, Berhane Temelso, George C. Shields, Zbigniew Kisiel, David J. Wales, Brooks H. Pate, Stuart C. Althorpe

Faculty Journal Articles

The nature of the intermolecular forces between water molecules is the same in small hydrogen-bonded clusters as in the bulk. The rotational spectra of the clusters therefore give insight into the intermolecular forces present in liquid water and ice. The water hexamer is the smallest water cluster to support low-energy structures with branched three-dimensional

hydrogen-bond networks, rather than cyclic two-dimensional topologies. Here we report measurements of splitting patterns in rotational transitions of the water hexamer prism, and we used quantum simulations to show that they result from geared and antigeared rotations of a pair of water molecules. Unlike previously reported …

Computational Study Of The Hydration Of Sulfuric Acid Dimers: Implications For Acid Dissociation And Aerosol Formation, Berhane Temelso, Thuong Ngoc Phan, George C. Shields

Faculty Journal Articles

We have investigated the thermodynamics of sulfuric acid dimer hydration using ab initio quantum mechanical methods. For (H₂SO₄)₂(H₂O)_n where n = 0−6, we employed high-level ab initio calculations to locate the most stable minima for each cluster size. The results presented herein yield a detailed understanding of the first deprotonation of sulfuric acid as a function of temperature for a system consisting of two sulfuric acid molecules and up to six waters. At 0 K, a cluster of two sulfuric acid molecules and one water remains undissociated. Addition of a second …