Electronic structure computations gradients

Thanks to the evolution of software and computers, CPMD or BOMD dynamics can be applied now to larger systems than in the 1990s. However, these AIMD calculations are still very time consuming due to the repetition of the self-consistent electronic structure and gradient calculations at every time step, that is generally about 1 fs for BOMD and about ten times less for CPMD. Even if parallelization decreases dramatically the computational effort, long trajectories at the ns scale, which is stiU very short in biochemistry, are only possible for systems with less than about 100 atoms. 

This algorithm alternates between the electronic structure problem and the nuclear motion It turns out that to generate an accurate nuclear trajectory using this decoupled algoritlun th electrons must be fuUy relaxed to the ground state at each iteration, in contrast to Ihe Car-Pairinello approach, where some error is tolerated. This need for very accurate basis se coefficients means that the minimum in the space of the coefficients must be located ver accurately, which can be computationally very expensive. However, conjugate gradient rninimisation is found to be an effective way to find this minimum, especially if informatioi from previous steps is incorporated [Payne et cd. 1992]. This reduces the number of minimi sation steps required to locate accurately the best set of basis set coefficients. 

Vibrational spectroscopy is of utmost importance in many areas of chemical research and the application of electronic structure methods for the calculation of harmonic frequencies has been of great value for the interpretation of complex experimental spectra. Numerous unusual molecules have been identified by comparison of computed and observed frequencies. Another standard use of harmonic frequencies in first principles computations is the derivation of thermochemical and kinetic data by statistical thermodynamics for which the frequencies are an important ingredient (see, e. g., Hehre et al. 1986). The theoretical evaluation of harmonic vibrational frequencies is efficiently done in modem programs by evaluation of analytic second derivatives of the total energy with respect to cartesian coordinates (see, e. g., Johnson and Frisch, 1994, for the corresponding DFT implementation and Stratman etal., 1997, for further developments). Alternatively, if the second derivatives are not available analytically, they are obtained by numerical differentiation of analytic first derivatives (i. e., by evaluating gradient differences obtained after finite displacements of atomic coordinates). In the past two decades, most of these calculations have been carried... 

The electronic structure method used to provide the energies and gradients of the states is crucial in photochemistry and photophysics. Ab initio electronic structure methods have been used for many years. Treating closed shell systems in their ground state is a problem that, in many cases, can now be solved routinely by chemists using standardized methods and computer packages. In order to obtain quantitative results, electron correlation (also referred to as dynamical correlation) should be included in the model and there are many methods available for doing this based on either variational or perturbation principles [41],... 

Also pure density-functional methods combined with plane-wave basis sets and ultrasoft pseudopotentials [58] were used in our studies of extended systems [59]. The computational efficiency of these methods enables larger systems and to some extent dynamical processes to be studied. Generalized-gradient approximation (GGA) or spin-polarized GGA DFT functionals [60, 61] were employed in the electronic structure calculations. 

In the above formula, Q is the nuclear coordinate, p, and I/r are the ground state and excited electronic terms. Here Kv is provided through the traditional Rayleigh-Schrodinger perturbation formula and K0 have an electrostatic meaning. This expression will be called traditional approach, which has, in principle, quantum correctness, but requires some amendments when different particular approaches of electronic structure calculation are employed (see the Bersuker s work in this volume). In the traditional formalism the vibronic constants P0 dH/dQ Pr) can be tackled with the electric field integrals at nuclei, while the K0 is ultimately related with electric field gradients. Computationally, these are easy to evaluate but the literally use of equations (1) and (2) definitions does not recover the total curvature computed by the ab initio method at hand. 

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