Atomic Hamiltonian

Among various theories of electronic structure, density functional theory (DFT) [1,2] has been the most successful one. This is because of its richness of concepts and at the same time simplicity of its implementation. The new concept that the theory introduces is that the ground-state density of an electronic system contains all the information about the Hamiltonian and therefore all the properties of the system. Further, the theory introduces a variational principle in terms of the ground-state density that leads to an equation to determine this density. Consider the expectation value (H) of the Hamiltonian (atomic units are used)... 

The idea of an adiabatic connection to determine Exc has been developed by-several authors (16-18). Here we closely follow the review by Parr and Yang (3). We consider a system of N interacting electrons in the presence of an external potential Vex(r) and characterized by the Hamiltonian (atomic units are used throughout, with e = h = m = 1)... 

To illustrate the above considerations, let us consider an artificial example. We will pretend that the electron in a hydrogen atom feels a harmonic force field. The electronic Hamiltonian (atomic units) is... 

Regular bonds Strong interaction, charge Hamiltonian atomic cohesive energy ... 

Applications of quantum mechanics to chemistry invariably deal with systems (atoms and molecules) that contain more than one particle. Apart from the hydrogen atom, the stationary-state energies caimot be calculated exactly, and compromises must be made in order to estimate them. Perhaps the most useful and widely used approximation in chemistry is the independent-particle approximation, which can take several fomis. Conuiion to all of these is the assumption that the Hamiltonian operator for a system consisting of n particles is approximated by tlie sum... 

At this point, it is appropriate to make some conmrents on the construction of approximate wavefiinctions for the many-electron problems associated with atoms and molecules. The Hamiltonian operator for a molecule is given by the general fonn... 

The Hamiltonian considered above, which connmites with E, involves the electromagnetic forces between the nuclei and electrons. However, there is another force between particles, the weak interaction force, that is not invariant to inversion. The weak charged current mteraction force is responsible for the beta decay of nuclei, and the related weak neutral current interaction force has an effect in atomic and molecular systems. If we include this force between the nuclei and electrons in the molecular Hamiltonian (as we should because of electroweak unification) then the Hamiltonian will not conuuiite with , and states of opposite parity will be mixed. However, the effect of the weak neutral current interaction force is mcredibly small (and it is a very short range force), although its effect has been detected in extremely precise experiments on atoms (see, for... 

Since atomic nuclei are not perfectly spherical their spin leads to an electric quadnipole moment if I>1 which interacts with the gradient of the electric field due to all surrounding electrons. The Hamiltonian of the nuclear quadnipole interactions can be written as tensorial coupling of the nuclear spin with itself... 

The approach is ideally suited to the study of IVR on fast timescales, which is the most important primary process in imimolecular reactions. The application of high-resolution rovibrational overtone spectroscopy to this problem has been extensively demonstrated. Effective Hamiltonian analyses alone are insufficient, as has been demonstrated by explicit quantum dynamical models based on ab initio theory [95]. The fast IVR characteristic of the CH cliromophore in various molecular environments is probably the most comprehensively studied example of the kind [96] (see chapter A3.13). The importance of this question to chemical kinetics can perhaps best be illustrated with the following examples. The atom recombination reaction... 

The basic Hamiltonian describing the motion of atoms and molecules under a strong laser is simple in the dipole approximation,... 

Figure C3.2.18.(a) Model a-helix, (b) hydrogen bonding contacts in tire helix, and (c) schematic representation of tire effective Hamiltonian interactions between atoms in tire protein backbone. From [23].

For H2, let us write down the zeroth-order electronic Hamiltonian (in atomic unit) ... 

In this section, the spin-orbit interaction is treated in the Breit-Pauli [13,24—26] approximation and incoi porated into the Hamiltonian using quasidegenerate perturbation theory [27]. This approach, which is described in [8], is commonly used in nuclear dynamics and is adequate for molecules containing only atoms with atomic numbers no larger than that of Kr. 

As our first model problem, we take the motion of a diatomic molecule under an external force field. For simplicity, it is assumed that (i) the motion is pla nar, (ii) the two atoms have equal mass m = 1, and (iii) the chemical bond is modeled by a stiff harmonic spring with equilibrium length ro = 1. Denoting the positions of the two atoms hy e 71, i = 1,2, the corresponding Hamiltonian function is of type... 

The technique for this calcu latioii in volves two steps. Th e first step computes the Hamiltonian or energy matrix. The elem en ts of this matrix are integrals involving the atomic orbitals and terms obtained from the Schrddiiiger equation. The m ost importan t con -... 

HypcrCb cm in tegrates cq tiation s 26 an d 27 to describe tb c mot ion s of atom s. In the absence of temperature regulation, tli ere are no external sources or depositories of energy, fhat is. no other energy terms exist in the Hamiltonian, and the total energy of the system is con slant. 

In an ab initio method, all the integrals over atom ic orbital basis function s are com puted and the bock in atrix of th e SCK com puta-tiori is formed (equation (6 1) on page 225) from the in tegrals. Th e Kock matrix divides inui two parts the one-electron Hamiltonian matrix, H, and the two-electron matrix, G, with the matrix ele-m en ts... 

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