An ab initio investigation of the potential energy surfaces and vibrational energies and wave functions of the anion, neutral, and cation Cu(H2O) complexes is presented. The equilibrium geometries and harmonic frequencies of the three charge states of Cu(H2O) are calculated at the MP2 level of theory. CCSD(T) calculations predict a vertical electron detachment energy for the anion complex of 1.65 eV and a vertical ionization potential for the neutral complex of 6.27 eV. Potential energy surfaces are calculated for the three charge states of the copper-water complexes. These potential energy surfaces are used in variational calculations of the vibrational wave functions and energies and from these, the dissociation energies D-0 of the anion, neutral, and cation charge states of Cu(H2O) are predicted to be 0.39, 0.16, and 1.74 eV, respectively. In addition, the vertical excitation energies, that correspond to the 4 P-2<--4 S-2 transition of the copper atom, and ionization potentials of the neutral Cu(H2O) are calculated over a range of Cu(H2O) configurations. In hydrogen-bonded, Cu-HOH configurations, the vertical excitation and ionization energies are blueshifted with respect to the corresponding values for atomic copper, and in Cu-OH2 configurations where the copper atom is located near the oxygen end of water, both quantities are redshifted. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.