Basis function for atoms

This method has proved extremely effective for the computation of AOs for atoms, it is certainly competitive in accuracy with the much more atom-specific method of solution of the radial equation by numerical quadrature. In particular the energy and overlap integrals associated with these basis functions for atoms are quite trivial to evaluate. 

A commonly used set of basis functions for atomic Hartree-Fock calculations is the set of Slater-type orbitals (STOs) whose normalized form is... 

The Laguerre functions (6.5.16) form a complete orthonormal set of functions that combine a fixed-exponent exponential decay with a polynomial in r. They therefore arise quite naturally when searching for a suitable set of one-electron basis functions for atomic applications. Because of their obvious similarity with the hydrogenic wave functions, we shall use for the Laguerre functions the same notation as for the hydrogenic functions, referring, for example, to X2m ... 

Ihe one-electron orbitals are commonly called basis functions and often correspond to he atomic orbitals. We will label the basis functions with the Greek letters n, v, A and a. n the case of Equation (2.144) there are K basis functions and we should therefore xpect to derive a total of K molecular orbitals (although not all of these will necessarily 3e occupied by electrons). The smallest number of basis functions for a molecular system vill be that which can just accommodate all the electrons in the molecule. More sophisti- ated calculations use more basis functions than a minimal set. At the Hartree-Fock limit he energy of the system can be reduced no further by the addition of any more basis unctions however, it may be possible to lower the energy below the Hartree-Fock limit ay using a functional form of the wavefunction that is more extensive than the single Slater determinant. 

The first way that a basis set can be made larger is to increase the number of basis functions per atom. Split valence basis sets, such as 3-21G and 6-31G, have two (or more) sizes of basis function for each valence orbital. For example, hydrogen and carbon are represented as ... 

In the TT-electron theories, each first-row atom contributes a single basis function. For the all valence electron models there is now an additional complication in at some of the basis functions could be on the same atomic centre. So how should we treat integrals involving basis functions all on the same atomic centre such as... 

And what if the basis functions are centred on different atoms The CNDO solution to the problem is to take all possible integrals such as those above to be equal, and to assume that they depend only on the atoms A and B on which the basis functions are centred. This satisfies the rotational invariance requirement. In CNDO theory, we write the two-electron integrals as pab and they are taken to have the same value irrespective of the basis functions on atom A and/or atom B. They are usually calculated exactly, but assuming that the orbital in question is a Is orbital (for hydrogen) or a 2s orbital (for a first row atom). 

The self-consistent field function for atoms with 2 to 36 electrons are computed with a minimum basis set of Slater-type orbitals. The orbital exponents of the atomic orbitals are optimized so as to ensure the energy minimum. The analysis of the optimized orbital exponents allows us to obtain simple and accurate rules for the 1 s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 2p, 3p, 4p and 3d electronic screening constants. These rules are compared with those proposed by Slater and reveal the need for the screening due to the outside electrons. The analysis of the screening constants (and orbital exponents) is extended to the excited states of the ground state configuration and the positive ions. 

Gaussian Basis Functions for use in Molecular Calculations III Contraction of (10s, 6p) Atomic Basis Sets for the First-Row Atoms T. FI. Dunning, Jr... 

Typically we fit up to the / = 3 components of the one center expansion. This gives a maximum of 16 components (some may be zero from the crystal symmetry). For the lowest symmetry structures we thus have 48 basis functions per atom. For silicon this number reduces to 6 per atom. The number of random points required depends upon the volume of the interstitial region. On average we require a few tens of points for each missing empty sphere. In order to get well localised SSW s we use a negative energy. 

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. 

The number and type of basis functions strongly influence the quality of the results. The use of a single basis function for each atomic orbital leads to file minimal basis set. In order to improve the results, extended basis sets should be used. These basis sets are named double-f, triple-f, etc. depending on whether each atomic orbital is described by two, three, etc. basis functions. Higher angular momentum functions, called polarization functions, are also necessary to describe the distortion of the electronic distribution due... 

The ECP basis sets include basis functions only for the outermost one or two shells, whereas the remaining inner core electrons are replaced by an effective core or pseudopotential. The ECP basis keyword consists of a source identifier (such as LANL for Los Alamos National Laboratory ), the number of outer shells retained (1 or 2), and a conventional label for the number of sets for each shell (MB, DZ, TZ,...). For example, LANL1MB denotes the minimal LANL basis with minimal basis functions for the outermost shell only, whereas LANL2DZ is the set with double-zeta functions for each of the two outermost shells. The ECP basis set employed throughout Chapter 4 (denoted LACV3P in Jaguar terminology) is also of Los Alamos type, but with full triple-zeta valence flexibility and polarization and diffuse functions on all atoms (comparable to the 6-311+- -G++ all-electron basis used elsewhere in this book). 

Semiempirical methods are widely used, based on zero differential overlap (ZDO) approximations which assume that the products of two different basis functions for the same electron, related to different atoms, are equal to zero [21]. The use of semiempirical methods, like MNDO, ZINDO, etc., reduces the calculations to about integrals. This approach, however, causes certain errors that should be compensated by assigning empirical parameters to the integrals. The limited sets of parameters available, in particular for transition metals, make the semiempirical methods of limited use. Moreover, for TM systems the self-consistent field (SCF) procedures are hardly convergent because atoms with partly filled d shells have many... 

In order to use wave-function-based methods to converge to the true solution of the Schrodinger equation, it is necessary to simultaneously use a high level of theory and a large basis set. Unfortunately, this approach is only feasible for calculations involving relatively small numbers of atoms because the computational expense associated with these calculations increases rapidly with the level of theory and the number of basis functions. For a basis set with N functions, for example, the computational expense of a conventional HF calculation typically requires N4 operations, while a conventional coupled-cluster calculation requires N7 operations. Advances have been made that improve the scaling of both FIF and post-HF calculations. Even with these improvements, however you can appreciate the problem with... 

If the optimizations are performed in calculations on atoms, the basis functions for at least some of the atoms are usually scaled, because AOs in molecules are generally more compact than AOs on atoms. Thus, a set of scaling factors must be chosen. If the basis set optimizations are performed in calculations on small molecules, the molecules to use in the optimizations must be chosen. These types... 

A modified INDO model that is not entirely obsolete is the symmetric orthogonal-ized INDO (SINDOl) model of Jug and co-workers, first described in 1980 (Nanda and Jug 1980). The various conventions employed by SINDOl represent slightly different modifications to INDO theory than those adopted in the MINDO/3 model, but the more fundamental difference is the inclusion of d functions for atoms of the second row in the periodic table. Inclusion of such functions in the atomic valence basis set proves critical for handling hyper-valent molecules containing these atoms, and thus SINDO1 performs considerably better for phosphorus-containing compounds, for instance, than do otlier semiempirical models that lack d functions (Jug and Schulz 1988). 

Figure 6.2 The radial behavior of various basis functions in atom-centered coordinates. The bold solid line at top is the STO (f = 1) for the hydrogen Is function for the one-electron H system, it is also the exact solution of the Schrodinger equation. Nearest it is the contracted STO-3G Is function...

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