A high-precision ab initio determination of the equilibrium geometry and force field of HOC(+)

The results of an ab initio molecular orbital investigation of the isoformyl cation, HOC(+), shape are reported. The effects of expanding the basis set to near the Hartree-Fock limit and of electron correlation were examined, and the results indicate that near the Hartree-Fock limit the HOC(+) is linear. An analytic potential function is presented, from which the calculated rotational energies are only 0.03 percent different from the experimental values. This represents a nearly two orders of magnitude reduction in error from earlier work.