Hartree method, self-consistent atomic orbitals

The Hartree-Fock orbitals are expanded in an infinite series of known basis functions. For instance, in diatomic molecules, certain two-center functions of elliptic coordinates are employed. In practice, a limited number of appropriate atomic orbitals (AO) is adopted as the basis. Such an approach has been developed by Roothaan 10>. In this case the Hartree-Fock differential equations are replaced by a set of nonlinear simultaneous equations in which the limited number of AO coefficients in the linear combinations are unknown variables. The orbital energies and the AO coefficients are obtained by solving the Fock-Roothaan secular equations by an iterative method. This is the procedure of the Roothaan LCAO (linear-combination-of-atomic-orbitals) SCF (self-consistent-field) method. 

In practice, calculations of xHF are based on the uncoupled Hartree-Fock, the finite field, and the self-consistent perturbation methods. Some workers use gauge-invariant atomic orbitals (GIAOs). A full review of the gauge invariance of SCF wavefunctions has been given by Epstein. 6... 

Many of the principles and techniques for calculations on atoms, described in section 6.2 of this chapter, can be applied to molecules. In atoms the electronic wave function was written as a determinant of one-electron atomic orbitals which contain the electrons these atomic orbitals could be represented by a range of different analytical expressions. We showed how the Hartree-Fock self-consistent-field methods could be applied to calculate the single determinantal best energy, and how configuration interaction calculations of the mixing of different determinantal wave functions could be performed to calculate the correlation energy. We will now see that these technques can be applied to the calculation of molecular wave functions, the atomic orbitals of section 6.2 being replaced by one-electron molecular orbitals, constructed as linear combinations of atomic orbitals (l.c.a.o. method). 

The aim of this chapter is to review the current status of the quantum-mechanical calculation of electric and magnetic properties of isolated atoms and molecules. In view of the rapid advances made during the past decade in the calculation of ab initio molecular wavefunctions, we will clearly concentrate for the most part on the calculation of such properties using standard ab initio methods such as gaussian orbital LCAO-MO-SCF (linear combination of atomic orbital-miolecular orbital-self-consistent field), configuration interaction (Cl), coupled Hartree-Fock, and the like, but will also review similar calculations at the semi-empirical and empirical level where appropriate. For readers unfamiliar with the theory of electric and magnetic properties, the books by Davies and by Atkins review the subject thoroughly, whilst the more technical details of quantum-mechanical calculations on atoms and molecules have been described in many other places. ... 

The Englishman, Hartree (1,60) the Russian, Fock (2,3) and the American, Slater (5-7), in the early development of modern quantum mechanics, pioneered the calculation of atomic electronic structure. Hartree based his method on the variation principle and this led naturally to the development of the self-consistent field method, which is at the heart of the design of modem molecular orbital programs. 

The formal analysis of the mathematics required incorporating the linear combination of atomic orbitals molecular orbital approximation into the self-consistent field method was a major step in the development of modem Hartree-Fock-Slater theory. Independently, Hall (57) and Roothaan (58) worked out the appropriate equations in 1951. Then, Clement (8,9,63) applied the procedure to calculate the electronic structures of many of the atoms in the Periodic Table using linear combinations of Slater orbitals. Nowadays linear combinations of Gaussian functions are the standard approximations in modem LCAO-MO theory, but the Clement atomic calculations for helium are recognized to be very instructive examples to illustrate the fundamentals of this theory (67-69). 

On the other hand, the linear combination of atomic orbitals - molecular orbital (LCAO-MO) theory, is actually the same as Hartree-Fock theory. The basic idea of this theory is that a molecular orbital is made of a linear combination of atom-centered basis functions describing the atomic orbitals. The Hartree-Fock procedure simply determines the linear expansion coefficients of the linear combination. The variables in the Hartree-Fock equations are recursively defined, that is, they depend on themselves, so the equations are solved by an iterative procedure. In typical cases, the Hartree-Fock solutions can be obtained in roughly 10 iterations. For tricky cases, convergence may be improved by changing the form of the initial guess. Since the equations are solved self-consistently, Hartree-Fock is an example of a self-consistent field (SCF) method. 

In order to extend these methods to make them feasible for the study dynamical chemical processes in biopolymers, simplifying assumptions are necessary. The most obvious choice is the use of semi-empirical techniques within the Hartree Fock, linear combination of atomic orbitals framework. These methods can achieve speedups on the order of 1000 over typical ab initio calculations using split valence basis sets within the Hartree Fock approximation. Often greater accuracy can be achieved as well because of the parameterization inherent in the semi-empirical approaches. One semi-empirical approach which has proven successful in representing many chemically interesting processes is the AMI and MNDO Hartree Fock Self-Consistent Field methods developed and paramerterized by Dewar and coworkers [46]. These methods have recently been implemented in a mixed quantum/ classical methodology for the study of chemical and biochemical processes by Field et al. [47]. 

The starting point of the creation of the theory of the many-electron atom was the idea of Niels Bohr [1] to consider each electron of an atom as orbiting in a stationary state in the field, created by the charge of the nucleus and the rest of the electrons of an atom. This idea is several years older than quantum mechanics itself. It allows one to construct an approximate wave function of the whole atom with the help of one-electron wave functions. They may be found by accounting for the approximate states of the passive electrons, in other words, the states of all electrons must be consistent. This is the essence of the self-consistent field approximation (Hartree-Fock method), widely used in the theory of many-body systems, particularly of many-electron atoms and ions. There are many methods of accounting more or less accurately for this consistency, usually named by correlation effects, and of obtaining more accurate theoretical data on atomic structure. 

Roothaan s Self-Consistent-Field Procedure.—While numerical integration techniques may be used to solve the Hartree-Fock equations in the case of atoms by the iterative method described above, the lower symmetry of the nuclear field present in molecules necessitates the use of an expansion for the determination of the molecular orbitals by a method developed by Roothaan.81 In Roothaan s approach, it is assumed that each molecular orbital may be adequately represented by a linear expansion in terms of some (simpler) set of basis functions xj, i.e. 

PDDO PRDDO RHF SAMO SCF SOGI STO STO-nG UA UHF VB VIP Projectors of Diatomic Differential Overlap Partial Retention of Diatomic Differential Overlap Restricted Hartree-Fock Simulated ab initio Method Self Consistent Field Spin Optimized GVB method Slater Type Orbital Slater Type Orbital expanded in terms of nGTO United Atom Unrestricted Hartree-Fock Valence Bond Vertical Ionization Potential... 

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