Interaction between LiH molecule and Li atom from state-of-the-art electronic structure calculations.

State-of-the-art ab initio techniques have been applied to compute the potential energy surface for the lithium atom interacting with the lithium hydride molecule in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The interaction potential was obtained using a combination of the explicitly correlated unrestricted coupled-cluster method with single, double, and noniterative triple excitations [UCCSD(T)-F12] for the core-core and core-valence correlation and full configuration interaction for the valence-valence correlation. The potential energy surface has a global minimum 8743 cm(-1) deep if the Li-H bond length is held fixed at the monomer equilibrium distance or 8825 cm(-1) deep if it is allowed to vary. In order to evaluate the performance of the conventional CCSD(T) approach, calculations were carried out using correlation-consistent polarized valence X-tuple-zeta basis sets, with X ranging from 2 to 5, and a very large set of bond functions. Using simple two-point extrapolations based on the single-power laws X(-2) and X(-3) for the orbital basis sets, we were able to reproduce the CCSD(T)-F12 results for the characteristic points of the potential with an error of 0.49% at worst. The contribution beyond the CCSD(T)-F12 model, obtained from full configuration interaction calculations for the valence-valence correlation, was shown to be very small, and the error bars on the potential were estimated. At linear LiH-Li geometries, the ground-state potential shows an avoided crossing with an ion-pair potential. The energy difference between the ground-state and excited-state potentials at the avoided crossing is only 94 cm(-1). Using both adiabatic and diabatic pictures, we analyze the interaction between the two potential energy surfaces and its possible impact on the collisional dynamics. When the Li-H bond is allowed to vary, a seam of conical intersections appears at C(2v) geometries. At the linear LiH-Li geometry, the conical intersection is at a Li-H distance which is only slightly larger than the monomer equilibrium distance, but for nonlinear geometries it quickly shifts to Li-H distances that are well outside the classical turning points of the ground-state potential of LiH. This suggests that the conical intersection will have little impact on the dynamics of Li-LiH collisions at ultralow temperatures. Finally, the reaction channels for the exchange and insertion reactions are also analyzed and found to be unimportant for the dynamics.