Alternative Wave Functions

The centrality of the FNA has spawned considerable research into improvement of the approach. The strategies for obtaining better nodes are numerous. Canonical HF orbitals, Kohn-Sham orbitals from density functional theory (DFT), and natural orbitals from post-HF methods have been used. The latter do not necessarily yield better nodes than single configuration wave functions [39-41]. More success has been found with alternative wave function forms that include correlation more directly than sums of Slater determinants. These include antisymmetrized geminal power functions [42,43], valence-bond [44,45] and Pfaffian [46] forms as well as... 

Note [240] that the phase in Eq. (13) is gauge independent. Based on the above mentioned heuristic conjecture (but fully justified, to our mind, in the light of our rigorous results), Resta noted that Within a finite system two alternative descriptions [in temis of the squared modulus of the wave function, or in temis of its phase] are equivalent [247]. 

Direct dynamics attempts to break this bottleneck in the study of MD, retaining the accuracy of the full electronic PES without the need for an analytic fit of data. The first studies in this field used semiclassical methods with semiempirical [66,67] or simple Hartree-Fock [68] wave functions to heat the electrons. These first studies used what is called BO dynamics, evaluating the PES at each step from the elech onic wave function obtained by solution of the electronic structure problem. An alternative, the Ehrenfest dynamics method, is to propagate the electronic wave function at the same time as the nuclei. Although early direct dynamics studies using this method [69-71] restricted themselves to adiabatic problems, the method can incorporate non-adiabatic effects directly in the electionic wave function. 

Electron correlation is often very important as well. The presence of multiple bonding interactions, such as pi back bonding, makes coordination compounds more sensitive to correlation than organic compounds. In some cases, the HF wave function does not provide even a qualitatively correct description of the compound. If the weight of the reference determinant in a single-reference CISD calculation is less than about 0.9, then the HF wave function is not qualitatively correct. In such cases, multiple-determinant, MSCSF, CASPT2, or MRCI calculations tend to be the most efficient methods. The alternative is... 

Since an SAS is computationally more expensive to generate than a van der Waals surface, and since the difference is often small, a van der Waals surface is often used in practice. Alternatively, the cavity may be calculated directly from the wave function, for example by taking a surface coiTesponding to an electron density of 0.001. It is... 

A currently popular alternative to the ah initio method is density functional theory, in which the energy is expressed in terms of the electron density rather than the wave-function itself. The advantage of this approach is that it is less demanding computationally, requires less computer time, and in some cases—particularly for d-metal complexes—gives better agreement with experimental values than other procedures. 

Choosing the continuum inhomogeneity differently yields the alternative K -matrix normalized wave functions ... 

This section introduces the basic mathematics of linear vector spaces as an alternative conceptual scheme for quantum-mechanical wave functions. The concept of vector spaces was developed before quantum mechanics, but Dirac applied it to wave functions and introduced a particularly useful and widely accepted notation. Much of the literature on quantum mechanics uses Dirac s ideas and notation. 

The minimization of this functional presents a problem which for many component mixtures can be quite timeconsuming if the truly optimal form of the interface and free energy is to be found. One may use an iterative method of solution much like the famous scheme used to solve for the Hartree-Fock wave function in electronic structure calculations [4]. An alternative, much to be preferred when sufficiently accurate, is to use a simple parametrized form for the particle densities through the interface and then determine the optimal values of these parameters. The simplest possible scheme is, of course, to take the profile to be a step function. 

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