Correlated wavefunctions

In principle, the deficiencies of HF theory can be overcome by so-called correlated wavefunction or post-HF methods. In the majority of the available methods, the wavefunction is expanded in terms of many Slater-determinants instead of just one. One systematic recipe to choose such determinants is to perform single-, double-, triple-, etc. substitutions of occupied HF orbitals by virtual orbitals. Pictorially speaking, the electron correlation is implemented in this way by allowing the electrons to jump out of the HF sea into the virtual space in order... 

Glaesemann KR, Gordon MS, Nakano H (1999) A study of feCO+ with correlated wavefunctions. Phys Chem Chem Phys 1 967... 

However, if this is not the case, the perturbations are large and perturbation theory is no longer appropriate. In other words, perturbation methods based on single-determinant wavefunctions cannot be used to recover non-dynamic correlation effects in cases where more than one configuration is needed to obtain a reasonable approximation to the true many-electron wavefunction. This represents a serious impediment to the calculation of well-correlated wavefunctions for excited states which is only possible by means of cumbersome and computationally expensive multi-reference Cl methods. 

Mean-Field Spin-Orbit Method Applicable to Correlated Wavefunctions. 

Duncanson and Coulson [242,243] carried out early work on atoms. Since then, the momentum densities of aU the atoms in the periodic table have been studied within the framework of the Hartree-Fock model, and for some smaller atoms with electron-correlated wavefunctions. There have been several tabulations of Jo q), and asymptotic expansion coefficients for atoms [187,244—251] with Hartree-Fock-Roothaan wavefunctions. These tables have been superseded by purely numerical Hartree-Fock calculations that do not depend on basis sets [232,235,252,253]. There have also been several reports of electron-correlated calculations of momentum densities, Compton profiles, and momentum moments for He [236,240,254-257], Li [197,237,240,258], Be [238,240,258, 259], B through F [240,258,260], Ne [239,240,258,261], and Na through Ar [258]. Schmider et al. [262] studied the spin momentum density in the lithium atom. A review of Mendelsohn and Smith [12] remains a good source of information on comparison of the Compton profiles of the rare-gas atoms with experiment, and on relativistic effects. 

Ternary moments have been computed for several systems of practical interest [314, 422]. Recent studies are based on accurate ab initio pair dipole surfaces obtained with highly correlated wavefunctions. Because not much is presently known about the irreducible ternary components, it is important to determine to what extent the measured three-body spectral components arise from pairwise-additive contributions [296, 299]. 

Kar and Ho [196] have estimated the oscillator strengths for different transitions, dipole and quadrupole polarizabilities of He for a wide range of the Debye screening parameters using explicitly correlated wavefunctions. Results presented by Kar and Ho [196] are very accurate and may be of substantial use for comparison with those from laser plasma experiments. The behavior of several singly and doubly excited states of He under screened potential was also accurately estimated by Kar and Ho [197] using correlated basis functions. Variation of the transition wavelength as a... 

Some the best-known work of Grein and his coworkers involves the development of methods for the calculation of hyperfine coupling constants.141 More recently the focus has shifted to calculating magnetic g-tensors from highly correlated wavefunctions. Grein s current interests include the study of stereoelectronic effects (such as the anomeric and reverse anomeric effects in acetal-like systems) in organic chemistry, a topic to which he has made important contributions.142... 

The Hylleraas function, with its improved properties as compared to a Hartree-Fock function, is called a correlated wavefunction, because it takes into account the mutual electron-electron interaction much better, and the motion of electrons beyond a mean-field average is termed correlated motion or the effect of electron correlations. (The definition of electron correlation is used here in the strict terminology. The mean-field average of electron-electron interactions is frequently also called electron correlation.) Comparing equ. (1.20) with equ. (1.16b) one has... 

This factor is responsible for an increase in the correlated wavefunction amplitude and hence in the charge distribution of both electrons when these electrons are on opposite sides of the nucleus ( 12 = 180° see Fig. 1.2(h)). 

The other approach most frequently used to describe a correlated wavefunction beyond the independent-particle model is based on configuration interaction (Cl). (If the expansion is made on grounds of other basis sets, the approach is often called superposition of configurations, SOC, in order to distinguish it from the Cl method.) According to the general principles of quantum mechanics, the exact wavefunction which is a solution of the full Hamiltonian H can be obtained as an expansion in any complete set of basis functions which have the same symmetry properties ... 

The correlated wavefunction which incorporates ISCI follows in analogy to equ. (1.25a) as an expansion into independent-particle wavefunctions for the ground state and contributions from virtual two-electron excitations ... 

The mixing coefficients can be determined by a multiconfigurational Dirac or Hartree-Fock procedure (MCDF, MCHF). In the present case, however, numerical values are not of interest, only the fact that A0 is smaller than unity due to the presence of virtual excitations in the normalized correlated wavefunction. 

According to equ. (1.24), the correlated wavefunctions F, then follow as expansions in the basis functions dr ... 

It is also possible to obtain graphically the special ah 3s-coefficients of the eigenvectors (the other components then follow from equ. (5.37b)), because the normalization of each correlated wavefunction F, imposes the following condition on its eigenvector components ... 

Configuration interaction and stationary wavefunctions In order to simplify the treatment, a correlated wavefunction P(r)corr built by Cl between two uncorrelated wavefunctions will be considered. (To shorten the notations, the tilde describing the antisymmetric character of the wavefunctions and the spin of the electron have been omitted, and the spatial vectors of all electrons are indicated by the symbol r only.) One has... 

Because the (Oj values are different for different basis functions j, the time-dependent correlated wavefunction built from such basis functions cannot be a stationary wavefunction of the full Hamiltonian. Instead, the stationary... 

This shows that for the selected two-state system exactly two stationary states exist for the correlated wavefunction, and these are given by... 

Recasting of correlated wavefunctions in helium (ground state)... 

As implied by the name, a correlated wavefunction takes into account at least some essential parts of the correlated motion between the electrons which results from their mutual Coulomb interaction. As analysed in Section 1.1.2 for the simplest correlated wavefunction, the helium ground-state function, this correlation imposes a certain spatial structure on the correlated function. In the discussion given there, two correlated functions were selected a three-parameter Hylleraas function, and a simple Cl function. In this section, these two functions will be represented in slightly different forms in order to make their similarities and differences more transparent. 

Since the EP is the expectation value of a one-electron operator r-1, its calculation is correct to one order higher than the wavefunction used [5]. This means that the quality of the Hartree-Fock (HF) SCF wavefunction is generally appropriate for calculating EP when the molecule is in ground electronic state. For excited molecules correlated wavefunction is necessary for EP calculations [6]. 

The coupled cluster (CC) method is actually related to both the perturbation (Section 5.4.2) and the Cl approaches (Section 5.4.3). Like perturbation theory, CC theory is connected to the linked cluster theorem (linked diagram theorem) [101], which proves that MP calculations are size-consistent (see below). Like standard Cl it expresses the correlated wavefunction as a sum of the HF ground state determinant and determinants representing the promotion of electrons from this into virtual MOs. As with the Mpller-Plesset equations, the derivation of the CC equations is complicated. The basic idea is to express the correlated wave-function Tasa sum of determinants by allowing a series of operators 7), 73,... to act on the HF wavefunction ... 

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