On the screened Kratzer potential and its variants

TL;DR

This paper critiques recent diatomic molecule potentials, clarifies misconceptions about parameters, and proposes a general method to correct these issues for better spectral and thermodynamic analysis.

Contribution

It identifies a flaw in recent potentials and introduces a simple, general correction method for the parameters used in vibrational-rotational spectra analysis.

Findings

Parameters D_e and r_e are not the dissociation energy and equilibrium bond length.

A simple correction method for potential parameters is proposed.

The correction improves the physical accuracy of molecular potentials.

Abstract

We argue that several potentials proposed recently for the analysis of the vibrational-rotational spectra of diatomic molecules and their thermodynamic properties exhibit a flaw. One can easily show that the parameters $D_e $ and $r_e$ in those potentials are not the dissociation energy and equilibrium bond length, respectively, as the proposers believe. We show how to overcome the mistake in a simple and quite general way.