Diabatic potential energy surfaces and semiclassical multi-state dynamics for fourteen coupled ³ A′ states of O₃

Abstract Dissociation and energy transfer in high-energy collisions of O 2 play important roles in simulating thermal energy content and heat flux in flows around hypersonic vehicles. Furthermore, atomic oxygen reactions on the vehicle surface are an important contributor to heat shield erosion. Molecular dynamics modeling is needed to better understand the relevant rate processes. Because it is necessary to model the gas flows in high-temperature shock waves, electronically excited states of O 2 and O can be populated, and molecular dynamics simulations should include collisions of electronically excited species and electronically nonadiabatic collisions. This requires potential energy surfaces and state couplings for many energetically accessible electronic states. Here we report a systematic strategy to calculate such surfaces and couplings. We have applied this method to the fourteen lowest-energy potential energy surfaces in the 3 A ′ manifold of O 3 , and we report a neural-network fit to diabatic potential energy matrix (DPEM). We illustrate the use of the resulting DPEM by carrying out semiclassical dynamics calculations of cross sections for excitation of O 2 in 3 A ′ collisions with O at two collision energies; these dynamics calculations are carried out by the curvature-driven coherent switching with decay of mixing method.