Excited states of OH-(H₂O)n clusters for n = 1-4: an ab initio study

Equation of motion coupled cluster calculations were performed on various structures of OH in clusters with one, two, three, and four water molecules to determine the energies of valence and charge transfer states. Motivation for these calculations is to understand the absorption spectrum of OH in water. Previous calculations on these species have confirmed that the longer wavelength transition observed is due to the A((2)∑) ← X((2)∏) valence transition, while the shorter wavelength transition is due to a charge-transfer from H2O to OH. While these previous calculations identified the lowest energy charge-transfer state, our calculations have included sufficient states to identify additional solvent-to-solute charge transfer states. The minimum energy structures of the clusters were determined by application of the Monte Carlo technique to identify candidate cluster structures, followed by optimization at the level of second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory. Calculations were performed on two structures of OH-H2O, three structures of OH-(H2O)2, four structures of OH-(H2O)3, and seven structures of OH-(H2O)4. Confirming previous calculations, as the number of water molecules increases, the energies of the excited valence and charge-transfer states decrease; however, the total number of charge-transfer states increases with the number of water molecules, suggesting that in the limit of OH in liquid water, the charge-transfer states form a band.