Dirac Hamiltonian relativistic effects

However, there also exists a third possibility. By using a famous relation due to Dirac, the relativistic effects can be (in a nonunique way) divided into spin-independent and spin-dependent terms. The former are collectively called scalar relativistic effects and the latter are subsumed under the name spin-orbit coupling (SOC). The scalar relativistic effects can be straightforwardly included in the one-electron Hamiltonian operator h. Unless the investigated elements are very heavy, this recovers the major part of the distortion of the orbitals due to relativity. The SOC terms may be treated in a second step by perturbation theory. This is the preferred way of approaching molecular properties and only breaks down in the presence of very heavy elements or near degeneracy of the investigated electronic state. 

We now consider how to eliminate either all relativistic effects or exclusively the spin-orbit interaction from the relativistic Hamiltonian. We start from the Dirac equation in the molecular field... 

At this point, it is appropriate to present a brief discussion on the origin of the FC operator (d function) in the two-component form (Pauli form) of the molecular relativistic Hamiltonian. Many textbooks adopt the point of view that the FC is a relativistic effect, which must be derived from the Dirac equation [50,51]. In other textbooks or review articles it is stressed that the FC is not a relativistic effect and that it can be derived from classical electrodynamics [52,53] disregarding the origin of the gyromagnetic factor g—2. In some textbooks both derivations are presented [54]. The relativistic derivations suffer from the inherent drawbacks in the Pauli expansion, in particular that the Pauli Hamiltonian can only be used in the context of the first-order perturbation theory. Moreover, the origin of the FC term appears to be different depending on whether one uses the ESC method or FW transformation. 

In this paper we present the first application of the ZORA (Zeroth Order Regular Approximation of the Dirac Fock equation) formalism in Ab Initio electronic structure calculations. The ZORA method, which has been tested previously in the context of Density Functional Theory, has been implemented in the GAMESS-UK package. As was shown earlier we can split off a scalar part from the two component ZORA Hamiltonian. In the present work only the one component part is considered. We introduce a separate internal basis to represent the extra matrix elements, needed for the ZORA corrections. This leads to different options for the computation of the Coulomb matrix in this internal basis. The performance of this Hamiltonian and the effect of the different Coulomb matrix alternatives is tested in calculations on the radon en xenon atoms and the AuH molecule. In the atomic cases we compare with numerical Dirac Fock and numerical ZORA methods and with non relativistic and full Dirac basis set calculations. It is shown that ZORA recovers the bulk of the relativistic effect and that ZORA and Dirac Fock perform equally well in medium size basis set calculations. For AuH we have calculated the equilibrium bond length with the non relativistic Hartree Fock and ZORA methods and compare with the Dirac Fock result and the experimental value. Again the ZORA and Dirac Fock errors are of the same order of magnitude. 

Since the Dirac equation is written for one electron, the real problem of ah initio methods for a many-electron system is an accurate treatment of the instantaneous electron-electron interaction, called electron correlation. The latter is of the order of magnitude of relativistic effects and may contribute to a very large extent to the binding energy and other properties. The DCB Hamiltonian (Equation 3) accounts for the correlation effects in the first order via the Vy term. Some higher order of magnitude correlation effects are taken into account by the configuration interaction (Cl), the many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) and by the presently most accurate coupled cluster (CC) technique. 

The method discussed here for the inclusion of relativistic effects in molecular electronic structure calculations is grounded in the Dirac-Fock approximation for atomic wave functions (29). The premise is that the major relativistic effects of the Dirac Hamiltonian are manifested in the core region, involving the core electrons, and that these effects propagate to the valence electrons. In addition, there are direct relativistic effects on valence electrons penetrating into the core region. Insofar as this is true, the valence electrons can be treated using a nonrelativistic Hamiltonian to which is added an operator, the relativistic effective core potential (REP). The REP formally, incorporates relativistic effects due to core electrons and to interactions of valence electrons with core electrons in an internally consistent way. 

The AREP has the advantage that it may be used in standard molecular calculations that are based on A-S coupling. The AREP may be interpreted as containing the relativistic effects included in the Dirac Hamiltonian, with the exception of spin-orbit coupling. This form is the same as that presented by Kahn et al. (33) which is based on the relativistic treatment of Cowan and Griffin (34). The Hamiltonian employed by Cowan and Griffin is based on the Pauli approximation to the Dirac Hamiltonian with the omission of the spin-orbit term. 

For the computational investigation of molecular systems containing heavy atoms, such as transition metals, lanthanides, and actinides, we could neglect neither relativity nor electron correlation. Relativistic effects, both spin-free and spin-orbit, increase with the nuclear charge of atoms. Therefore, instead of the nonrelativistic Schrodinger equation, we must start with the Dirac equation, which has four-component solutions. For many-electron systems, the four-component Hamiltonian is constructed from the one-electron Dirac operator with an approximated relativistic two-electron operator, such as the Coulomb, Breit, or Gaunt operator, within the nopair approximation. The four-component method is relativistically rigorous, which includes both spin-free and spin-orbit effects in a balanced way. However it requires much computational time since it contains more variational parameters than the approximated, one or two-component method. 

To elucidate the nature of chemical bonding in metal carbides with the NaCl structure, the valence electronic states for TiC and UC have been calculated using the discrete-variational (DV) Xa method. Since relativistic effects on chemical bonding of compounds containing uranium atom become significant, the relativistic Hamiltonian, i.e., the DV-Dirac-Slater method, was used for UC. The results... 

Accounting for relativistic effects in computational organotin studies becomes complicated, because Hartree-Fock (HF), density functional theory (DFT), and post-HF methods such as n-th order Mpller-Plesset perturbation (MPn), coupled cluster (CC), and quadratic configuration interaction (QCI) methods are non-relativistic. Relativistic effects can be incorporated in quantum chemical methods with Dirac-Hartree-Fock theory, which is based on the four-component Dirac equation. " Unformnately the four-component Flamiltonian in the all-electron relativistic Dirac-Fock method makes calculations time consuming, with calculations becoming 100 times more expensive. The four-component Dirac equation can be approximated by a two-component form, as seen in the Douglas-Kroll (DK) Hamiltonian or by the zero-order regular approximation To address the electron cor-... 

In this section we briefly review the main properties of the Dirac equation that is the basic equation to start with to build a relativistic effective Hamiltonian for atomic and molecular calculations. This single particle equation, as already stated in the introduction, was established in 1928 by P.A.M Dirac [1] as the Lorentz invariant counterpart of the Schrodinger equation. On a note let us recall that the first attempts to replace the Schrodinger equation by an equation fulfilling the requirements of special relativity started just after quantum... 

Dealing with electrons we know that the dominant interaction between them is the Coulomb repulsion corrected, because electrons are fermions, by interactions induced by their spin. The spin-orbit interaction is already included in the one-electron Dirac Hamiltonian but the two-electron interaction should also include interactions classically known as spin-other-orbit, spin-spin etc... Furthermore a relativistic theory should incorporate the fact that the speed of light being finite there is no instantaneous interaction between particles. The most common way of deriving an effective Hamiltonian for a many electron system is to start from the Furry [11] bound interaction picture. A more detailed discussion is given in chapter 8 emd we just concentrate on some practical considerations. 

The Dirac equation with four spinor components demands large computational efforts to solve. Relativistic effects in electronic structure calculations are therefore usually considered by means of approximate one- or two-component equations. The approximate relativistic (also called quasi-relativistic) Hamiltonians consist of the nonrelativistic Hamiltonian augmented with additional... 

Figure 5. Relativistic effects on bond lengths and binding energies of group 4 tctrahydrides XH. The bond length contraction (in A) and bond destabilization (in eV) were obtained as the difference between relativistic Dirac-Hartree-Fock calculations based on the Dirac-Coulomb-Gaunt Hamiltonian and corresponding nonrelativistic Hartree-Fock calculations [28,29].

To treat relativistic effects theoretically, the Dirac equation is usually solved rather than the non-relativistic Schrodinger equation. The one-electron Dirac Hamiltonian is written by... 

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