Collision energy dependence of the O(1D) + HCl --> OH + Cl(2P) reaction studied by crossed beam scattering and quasiclassical trajectory calculations on ab initio potential energy surfaces.

The dynamics of the O(1D) + HCl --> OH + Cl(2P) reaction are investigated by a crossed molecular beam ion-imaging method and quasiclassical trajectory calculations on the three ab initio potential energy surfaces, the ground 1(1)A' and two excited (1(1)A'' and 2(1)A') states. The scattering experiment was carried out at collision energies of 4.2, 4.5, and 6.4 kcal/mol. The observed doubly differential cross sections (DCSs) for the Cl(2P) product exhibit almost no collision energy dependence over this inspected energy range. The nearly forward-backward symmetric DCS indicates that the reaction proceeds predominantly on the ground-state potential energy surface at these energies. Variation of the forward-backward asymmetry with collision energy is interpreted using an osculating complex model. Although the potential energy surfaces obtained by CASSCF-MRCI ab initio calculations exhibit relatively low potential barriers of 1.6 and 6.5 kcal/mol for 1(1)A'' and 2(1)A', respectively, the dynamics calculations indicate that contributions of these excited states are small at the collision energies lower than 15.0 kcal/mol. Theoretical DCSs calculated for the ground-state reaction pathway agree well with the observed ones. These experimental and theoretical results suggest that the titled reaction at collision energies less than 6.5 kcal/mol is predominantly via the ground electronic state.