Vibrational transition moments of CH4 from first principles

New nine-dimensional (9D), ab initio electric dipole moment surfaces (DMSs) of methane in its ground electronic state are presented. The DMSs are computed using an explicitly correlated coupled cluster CCSD(T)-F12 method in conjunction with an F12-optimized correlation consistent basis set of the TZfamily. A symmetrized molecular bond representation is used to parameterise these 9D DMSs in terms of sixth-order polynomials. Vibrational transition moments as well as band intensities for a large number of IR-active vibrational bands of CH4 are computed by vibrationally averaging the ab initio dipole moment components. The vibrational wavefunctions required for these averages are computed variationally using the program TROVE and a new ‘spectroscopic’ CH4 potential energy surface. The new DMSs will be used to produce a hot line list for CH4. 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.