The vibrational Jahn–Teller effect in E⊗e systems

[Display omitted] •The vibrational Jahn–Teller effect is documented for three E⊗e molecular systems.•The spontaneous vibrational Jahn–Teller distortion is very small.•Vibrational Jahn–Teller splittings are substantial (1–60cm−1).•Vibrational conical intersections in CH3OH are accessible at low energies. The Jahn–Teller theorem is applied in the vibrational context where degenerate high-frequency vibrational states (E) are considered as adiabatic functions of low-frequency vibrational coordinates (e). For CH3CN and Cr(C6H6)(CO)3, the global minimum of the non-degenerate electronic potential energy surface occurs at the C3v geometry, but in CH3OH, the equilibrium geometry is far from the C3v reference geometry. In the former cases, the computed spontaneous Jahn–Teller distortion is exceptionally small. In methanol, the vibrational Jahn–Teller interaction results in the splitting of the degenerate E-type CH stretch into what have been traditionally assigned as the distinct ν2 and ν9 vibrational bands. The ab initio vibrational frequencies are fit precisely by a two-state high-order Jahn–Teller Hamiltonian (Viel and Eisfeld, 2004). The presence of vibrational conical intersections, including 7 for CH3OH, has implications for spectroscopy, for geometric phase, and for ultrafast localized non-adiabatic energy transfer.