The excited states of the Criegee intermediate CH2OO are studied in molecular dynamics simulations using directly potentials from multi-reference perturbation theory (MR-PT2). The photoexcitation of the species is simulated, and trajectories are propagated in time on the excited state. Some of the photoexcitation events lead to direct fragmentation of the molecule, but other trajectories describe at least several vibrations in the excited state, that may terminate by relaxation to the ground electronic state. Limits on the role of non-adiabatic contributions to the process are estimated by two different simulations, one that forces surface-hopping at potential crossings, and another that ignores surface hopping altogether. The effect of non-adiabatic transitions is found to be small. Spectroscopic implications and consequences for the interpretation of experimental results are discussed.

First-principles quantum calculations for anharmonic vibrational spectroscopy of three protected dipeptides are carried out and compared with experimental data. Using hybrid HF/MP2 potentials, the Vibrational Self-Consistent Field with Second-Order Perturbation Correction (VSCF-PT2) algorithm is used to compute the spectra without any ad hoc scaling or fitting. All of the vibrational modes (135 for the largest system) are treated quantum mechanically and anharmonically using full pair-wise coupling potentials to represent the interaction between different modes. In the hybrid potential scheme the MP2 method is used for the harmonic part of the potential and a modified HF method is used for the anharmonic part. The overall agreement between computed spectra and experiment is very good and reveals different signatures for different conformers. This study shows that first-principles spectroscopic calculations of good accuracy are possible for dipeptides hence it opens possibilities for determination of dipeptide conformer structures by comparison of spectroscopic calculations with experiment.