QUANTUM-THEORY OF 4-ATOM REACTIONS USING ARRANGEMENT CHANNEL HYPERSPHERICAL COORDINATES - FORMULATION AND APPLICATION TO OH-2[--]H2O+H(H)

An arrangement channel hyperspherical coordinate method for performing quantum scattering calculations on four-atom reactions is formulated. This method treats the vibrational and rotational states in different arrangement channels by a close-coupling expansion in nonorthogonal f unctions. The method is applied to the calculation of state-to-state p robabilities for the OH+H-2-->H2O divided by H reaction. Good agreemen t is found with cumulative and state-selected reaction probabilities p reviously calculated by other methods. The major advantage of this gen eral approach is that the whole S matrix can be obtained in a single c alculation. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.