Crystal molecule, electron correlation

Quantum Systems in Chemistry and Physics is a broad area of science in which scientists of different extractions and aims jointly place special emphasis on quantum theory. Several topics were presented in the sessions of the symposia, namely 1 Density matrices and density functionals 2 Electron correlation effects (many-body methods and configuration interactions) 3 Relativistic formulations 4 Valence theory (chemical bonds and bond breaking) 5 Nuclear motion (vibronic effects and flexible molecules) 6 Response theory (properties and spectra atoms and molecules in strong electric and magnetic fields) 7 Condensed matter (crystals, clusters, surfaces and interfaces) 8 Reactive collisions and chemical reactions, and 9 Computational chemistry and physics. 

A systematic analysis of the electrostatic interactions in the crystals of 40 rigid organic molecules was undertaken by Price and coworkers (D. S. Coombes et al. 1996). In this work, distributed (i.e., local) multipoles up to hexadecapoles, obtained from SCF calculations with 6-31G basis sets, scaled by a factor of 0.9 to allow for the omission of electron correlation, are used in the evaluation of the electrostatic interactions. The experimental lattice constants and structures are reproduced successfully, the former to within a few percent of the experimental... 

Several issues remain to be addressed. The effect of the mutual penetration of the electron distributions should be analyzed, while the use of theoretical densities on isolated molecules does not take into account the induced polarization of the molecular charge distribution in a crystal. In the calculations by Coombes et al. (1996), the effect of electron correlation on the isolated molecule density is approximately accounted for by a scaling of the electrostatic contributions by a factor of 0.9. Some of these effects are in opposite directions and may roughly cancel. As pointed out by Price and coworkers, lattice energy calculations based on the average static structure ignore the dynamical aspects of the molecular crystal. However, the necessity to include electrostatic interactions in lattice energy calculations of molecular crystals is evident and has been established unequivocally. 

These properties of the d-shell chromophore (group) prove the necessity of the localized description of d-electrons of transition metal atom in TMCs with explicit account for effects of electron correlations in it. Incidentally, during the time of QC development (more than three quarters of century) there was a period when two directions based on two different approximate descriptions of electronic structure of molecular systems coexisted. This reproduced division of chemistry itself to organic and inorganic and took into account specificity of the molecules related to these classical fields. The organic QC was then limited by the Hiickel method, the elementary version of the HFR MO LCAO method. The description of inorganic compounds — mainly TMCs,— within the QC of that time was based on the crystal field... 

Karpfen" was able to consider an infinitely extended linear chain of HCN molecules using an ab initio crystal-orbital approach, with basis sets ranging from STO-3G to [641/41], albeit without any consideration of electron correlation. Polynomials of second and third order were fit to the results, computed for a grid of values of r(CH), r(CN), and... 

A later work continued the investigation of extended chains of water molecules, incorporating the effects of electron correlation. As in the oligomers of HF, the length of the H-bond contracts as the chain enlarges. The small nonlinearity present in the dimer vanishes as well. Crystal orbital techniques were employed to consider infinitely extended chains. Some of the more interesting features of the infinite chain are listed in Table 5.11... 

Electronic charge densities have fundamental influence on a wide variety of molecular properties. Electron densities are related to the formal sizes of atoms and the formal bond lengths of molecules, for example, in various crystals [278], and there are important relations between experimental electron densities and temperature [279]. Electronic charge densities p(r) can be calculated by various quantum chemical methods, both ab initio and semiempirical (see, e.g., refs. [90,91]). Density difference calculations are used for direct comparisons of electronic structures (see, e.g., ref. [280]), whereas the effects of electron correlation on charge densities are of special importance in the study of nonbonded interactions [281]. 

The AIMP method as a common strategy for effective core potential calculations in molecules and for embedded cluster calculations, has been detailed and reviewed [17]. In this paper, we will pay special attention to its applications in the field of structure and spectroscopy of crystal defects created by actinide element impurities, where relativistic effects are a determinant factor, electron correlation and host embedding effects are also key elements, and not only the ground state but also large manifolds of hundreds of excited states are involved in the chemical and physical processes of interest. 

Relativistic and electron correlation effects play an important role in the electronic structure of molecules containing heavy elements (main group elements, transition metals, lanthanide and actinide complexes). It is therefore mandatory to account for them in quantum mechanical methods used in theoretical chemistry, when investigating for instance the properties of heavy atoms and molecules in their excited electronic states. In this chapter we introduce the present state-of-the-art ab initio spin-orbit configuration interaction methods for relativistic electronic structure calculations. These include the various types of relativistic effective core potentials in the scalar relativistic approximation, and several methods to treat electron correlation effects and spin-orbit coupling. We discuss a selection of recent applications on the spectroscopy of gas-phase molecules and on embedded molecules in a crystal enviromnent to outline the degree of maturity of quantum chemistry methods. This also illustrates the necessity for a strong interplay between theory and experiment. 

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