Dipole-bound anion of 1,3-butanediol. Ab initio and Rydberg electron transfer spectroscopy study

Rydberg electron transfer spectroscopy (RET) has been used to determine the dipole-bound (DB) electron affinity (EA) of 1,3-butanediol and a single spectral feature was obtained corresponding to the EA value of 8±1 meV. A series of high-level ab initio calculations were also carried out for this system. They revealed an interesting configuration landscape of the 1,3-butanediol DB anion with four minima corresponding to different configurations. All four configurations can be responsible for the single RET spectral peak.