Definitions for "Potential energy surface"
Surface (hypersurface) in (3 + 1)- dimensional space expressing the potential energy of interaction within an- particle system, as a function of the 3 position coordinates; see Born-Oppenheimer approximation.
The potential energy of a ground-state molecular system containing atoms is a function of its geometry, defined by 3 spatial coordinates (a configuration space). If the energy is imagined as corresponding to a height in a 3 + 1 dimensional space, the resulting landscape of hills, hollows, and valleys is the potential energy surface.
a surface in multidimensional space, one dimension being energy and the other inter-reactant distances III