A WAVE-PACKET STUDY OF AR...I2 (B)-]AR+I+I ELECTRONIC PREDISSOCIATION

A Golden Rule wave packet treatment of Ar...I2 (B, upsilon' = 16-24) - -> Ar + I + I electronic predissociation is presented. It is assumed t hat the I2 electronic state responsible for the predissociation is the repulsive a(3PI1g). The calculations were performed at a fixed T-shap ed configuration for two different van der Waals potentials in the a(3 PI1g) electronic state, one purely repulsive and the other attractive. It is found that only the attractive potential can reproduce the osci llations of the electronic predissociation rate as a function of the i nitial vibrational quantum number upsilon' of I2 Measured recently (M. L. Burke and W. Klemperer, J. Chem. Phys. 98 (1993) 6642).