Quasiclassical trajectory study of the effect of antisymmetric stretch mode excitation on the O(³P) + CH₄(ν₃ = 1) → OH + CH₃ reaction on an analytical potential energy surface. Comparison with experiment.

Motivated by a recent crossed-beam experiment on the title reaction reported by Pan and Liu [J. Chem. Phys. 140, 191101 (2014)], a detailed dynamics study was performed at three collision energies using quasiclassical trajectory (QCT) calculations based on a full-dimensional potential energy surface recently developed by our group (PES-2014). Although theory/experiment agreement is not yet quantitative, in general the theoretical results reproduce the experimental evidence: the vibrational branching ratio of OH(v = 1)/OH(v = 0) is ~0.8/0.2, excitation of the antisymmetric CH stretching mode in methane increases reactivity by factor 2.28-1.50, although an equivalent amount as translational energy is more efficient in promoting the reaction and, finally, product angular distribution shifts from backward in the CH4(ν = 0) ground-state to sideways when the antisymmetric CH stretching mode is excited. These results give confidence to the PES-2014 surface, depend on the quantization procedure used, are comparable with recent QCT calculations or improve previous theoretical studies using a different surface, and demonstrate the utility of the theory/experiment collaboration.