Complex energy level method

The other one, the Complex Energy Levels (CEL) method, directly postulates complex energy levels. As will be seen, these two methods lead to equivalent line shapes when both the adiabatic and harmonic approximations are simultaneously removed. 

As for the special situations involved in our above adiabatic approach and dealing with the CEL method, we may write the complex energy levels as... 

Figure 1. Complex energy levels for a model ICl-Ne system (in reduced units). Shown are the accurate results (complex scaling method, crosses), first-order diahatic (FOD, fdled squares) and first-order adiabatic (FOA. open circles).

The complexity of molecular systems precludes exact solution for the properties of their orbitals, including their energy levels, except in the very simplest cases. We can, however, approximate the energies of molecular orbitals by the variational method that finds their least upper bounds in the ground state as Eq. (6-16)... 

The method presented here for evaluating energy levels from the spin Hamiltonian and then determining the allowed transitions is quite general and can be applied to more complex systems by using the appropriate spin Hamiltonian. Of particular interest in surface studies are molecules for which the g values, as well as the hyperfine coupling constants, are not isotropic. These cases will be discussed in the next two sections. 

It is important to realize that each of the electronic-structure methods discussed above displays certain shortcomings in reproducing the correct band structure of the host crystal and consequently the positions of defect levels. Hartree-Fock methods severely overestimate the semiconductor band gap, sometimes by several electron volts (Estreicher, 1988). In semi-empirical methods, the situation is usually even worse, and the band structure may not be reliably represented (Deak and Snyder, 1987 Besson et al., 1988). Density-functional theory, on the other hand, provides a quite accurate description of the band structure, except for an underestimation of the band gap (by up to 50%). Indeed, density-functional theory predicts conduction bands and hence conduction-band-derived energy levels to be too low. This problem has been studied in great detail, and its origins are well understood (see, e.g., Hybertsen and Louie, 1986). To solve it, however, requires techniques of many-body theory and carrying out a quasi-particle calculation. Such calculational schemes are presently prohibitively complex and too computationally demanding to apply to defect calculations. 

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