Ab initio potential energy and dipole moment surfaces of (H2O)2

A full-dimensional ab initio potential energy surface (PES) and dipole moment surface (DMS) are reported for the water dimer, (H2O)2. The CCSD(T)-PES is a very precise fit to 19,805 ab initio energies obtained with the coupled-cluster (CCSD(T)) method, using an aug-cc-pVTZ basis. The standard counterpoise correction was applied to approximately eliminate basis set superposition errors. The fit is based on an approach that incorporates the permutational symmetry of identical atoms [Huang, X.; Braams, B.; Bowman, J. M. J. Chem.Phys. 2005, 122, 044308]. The DMS is a fit to the dipole moment obtained with Møller-Plesset (MP2) theory, using an aug-cc-pVTZ basis. The PES has an RMS fitting error of 31 cm(-1) for energies below 20,000 cm(-1), relative to the global minimum. This surface can describe various internal floppy motions, including various monomer inversions, and isomerization pathways. Ten characteristic stationary points have been located on the surface, four of which are transition structures and the rest are higher order saddle points. Their geometrical and vibrational properties are presented and compared with available previous theoretical work. The CCSD(T)-PES and MP2-DMS dissociate correctly (and symmetrically) to two H2O monomers, with D(e) = 1665.7 cm(-1) (19.93 kJ/mol). Accurate quantum calculations of the zero-point energy of the dimer (using diffusion Monte Carlo) and the monomers (using a vibrational configuration interaction approach) are reported, and these together with D(e) give a value of D0 of 1042 cm(-1) (12.44 kJ/mol). A best estimated value is 1130 cm(-1) (13.5 kJ/mol).