Role of tunneling of hydrogen in photoenolization of a ketone

Photoenolization of a ketone in its lowest triplet state was examined using the AM1 semiempirical molecular orbital method with complete geometry optimization at the configuration interaction level in the restricted Hartree-Fock frame. The theoretical barrier fits with a polynomial given by Eq. (1) and the probability of tunneling of hydrogen was calculated by the WKB method. The density of states above the zero-point level was estimated by the Whitten-Rabinovitch approximation. Rate constants for the hydrogen and deuterium-abstraction processes via tunneling were then computed at different temperatures