Adiabatic potential energy surfaces and photodissociation mechanisms for highly excited states of H₂O

Full-dimensional adiabatic potential energy surfaces of the electronic ground state X̃ and nine excited states Ã, Ĩ, B̃, C̃, D̃, D̃′, D̃″, Ẽ′ and F̃ of H2O molecule are developed at the level of internally contracted multireference configuration interaction with the Davidson correction. The potential energy surfaces are fitted by using Gaussian process regression combining permutation invariant polynomials. With a large selected active space and extra diffuse basis set to describe these Rydberg states, the calculated vertical excited energies and equilibrium geometries are in good agreement with the previous theoretical and experimental values. Compared with the well-investigated photodissociation of the first three low-lying states, both theoretical and experimental studies on higher states are still limited. In this work, we focus on all the three channels of the highly excited state, which are directly involved in the vacuum ultraviolet photodissociation of water. In particular, some conical intersections of D̃–Ẽ′, Ẽ′-F̃, ÖĨ and Ĩ– C̃ states are clearly illustrated for the first time based on the newly developed potential energy surfaces (PESs). The nonadiabatic dissociation pathways for these excited states are discussed in detail, which may shed light on the photodissociation mechanisms for these highly excited states.