Morse potential

The Morse potential, named after physicist Philip M. Morse, is a convenient interatomic interaction model for the potential energy of a diatomic molecule. It is a better approximation for the vibrational structure of the molecule than the QHO (quantum harmonic oscillator) because it explicitly includes the effects of bond breaking, such as the existence of unbound states. It also accounts for the anharmonicity of real bonds and the non-zero transition probability for overtone and combination bands. The Morse potential can also be used to model other interactions such as the interaction between an atom and a surface. Due to its simplicity (only three fitting parameters), it is not used in modern spectroscopy. However, its mathematical form inspired the MLR (Morse/Long-range) potential, which is the most popular potential energy function used for fitting spectroscopic data.

The Morse potential energy function is of the form

Here ${\displaystyle r}$ is the distance between the atoms, ${\displaystyle r_{e}}$ is the equilibrium bond distance, ${\displaystyle D_{e}}$ is the well depth (defined relative to the dissociated atoms), and ${\displaystyle a}$ controls the 'width' of the potential (the smaller ${\displaystyle a}$ is, the larger the well). The dissociation energy of the bond can be calculated by subtracting the zero point energy ${\displaystyle E(0)}$ from the depth of the well. The force constant of the bond can be found by Taylor expansion of ${\displaystyle V(r)}$ around ${\displaystyle r=r_{e}}$ to the second derivative of the potential energy function, from which it can be shown that the parameter, ${\displaystyle a}$, is

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