The potential energy curve of the ground state of the potassium dimer, X1Sigma(g)+ K2.

The most recently published listings of vibrational term values and corresponding turning points of the potential energy curve of X (1)Sigma(g) (+) K(2) consist of two sets of data: energy levels v(")=0-73 and v(")=74-81. The two sets of data are found to exhibit a discontinuity. This is due to different Dunham coefficients used to produce a listing of turning points for levels v(")=0-73 and for levels v(")=74-81. This work provides an explicit, self-consistent listing of turning points for the entire domain of observed vibrational term values. New values are reported for levels v(")=53-81. This potential yields eigenvalues in excellent agreement with experimental vibrational term values and predicts two more bound levels. A "universal" function proposed in 1991 for predicting potential energy curves yields eigenvalues for levels v(")=0-81 (99.96% of dissociation) that have an average absolute deviation from the experiment of 0.95 cm(-1).