By Klaus P. Huber and Gerhard H. Herzberg. NIST Chemistry WebBook compilation of diatomic constants.
Cited row: ground state of hydrogen bromide, and . The isotope designation in this table is H81Br. These constants characterize low vibrational levels; an exact global Morse potential is a further modelling assumption.
The molecule with the larger inferred dissociation energy is assigned the stronger hydrogen–halogen bond: and . Moving from bromine to the larger iodine atom generally lengthens the bond and reduces effective overlap with the compact hydrogen orbital, so hydrogen iodide is more weakly bound. Independently, the tabulated ground-state harmonic constants near for hydrogen bromide and for hydrogen iodide agree with the inferred assignment.[ref]
Hydrogen bromide: Constants of diatomic molecules by Klaus P. Huber and others. Ground X 1Sigma+ row, harmonic wavenumber 2648.975 cm−1
[ref]Hydrogen iodide: Constants of diatomic molecules by Klaus P. Huber and others. Ground X 1Sigma+ row, harmonic wavenumber 2309.014 cm−1
The ordering is the identification criterion; the low-level Morse oscillator extrapolations above should not be presented as measured dissociation energies.