Improving Potential Energy Surfaces Using Experimental Feshbach Resonance Tomography

Abstract

The structure and dynamics of a molecular system is governed by its potential energy surface (PES), representing the total energy as a function of the nuclear coordinates. Obtaining accurate potential energy surfaces is limited by the exponential scaling of Hilbert space, restricting quantitative predictions of experimental observables from first principles to small molecules with just a few electrons. Here, we present an explicitly physics-informed approach for improving and assessing the quality of families of PESs by modifying them through linear coordinate transformations based on experimental data. We demonstrate this "morphing" of the PES for the He-H$_{2}^{+}$ complex for reference surfaces at three different levels of quantum chemistry and using recent comprehensive Feshbach resonance(FR) measurements. In all cases, the positions and intensities of peaks in the collision cross-section are improved. We find these observables to be mainly sensitive to the long-range part of the PES.