Identification Of Potential Engery Curves

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A potential energy surface is generally used within the adiabatic or Born Oppenheimer approximation in quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics to model chemical reactions and interactions in simple chemical and physical systems. The "(hyper)surface" name comes from the fact that the total energy of an atom arrangement can be represented as a curve or (multidimensional) surface, with atomic positions as variables. The best visualization for a layman would be to think of a landscape, where going North-South and East-West are two independent variables (the equivalent of two geometrical parameters of the molecule), and the height of the land we are on would be the energy associated with a given value of such variables. These simple potential energy surfaces (which can be obtained analytically), however, only provide an adequate description of the very simplest chemical systems. To model an actual chemical reaction, a potential energy surface must be created to take into account every possible orientation of the reactant and product molecules and the electronic energy of each of these orientations.

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• Identification
• Of
• Potential
• Engery
• Curves