Hamiltonian variational principle

The Hamiltonian variational principle states that the motion of the system between two fixed points, denoted by q,t)x and (<7, )2, renders the action integrah ... 

The picture here is of uncoupled Gaussian functions roaming over the PES, driven by classical mechanics. The coefficients then add the quantum mechanics, building up the nuclear wavepacket from the Gaussian basis set. This makes the treatment of non-adiabatic effects simple, as the coefficients are driven by the Hamiltonian matrices, and these elements couple basis functions on different surfaces, allowing hansfer of population between the states. As a variational principle was used to derive these equations, the coefficients describe the time dependence of the wavepacket as accurately as possible using the given... 

Stated in still other words this means that for any trial density p(r) - which satisfies the necessary boundary conditions such as p( ) - 0, J p( ) dr = N, and which is associated with some external potential Vext - the energy obtained from the functional given in equation (4-6) represents an upper bound to the true ground state energy E0. E0 results if and only if the exact ground state density is inserted into equation (4-8). The proof of the inequality (4-11) is simple since it makes use of the variational principle established for wave functions as detailed in Chapter 1. We recall that any trial density p(r) defines its own Hamiltonian H and hence its own wave function. This wave function can now be taken as the trial wave function for the Hamiltonian generated from the true external potential Vext. Thus, we arrive at... 

Given the trial wavefunction - the Slater determinant eq. (11.37) - we then use the variational principle to minimize the energy - the expectation value of the Hamiltonian H - with respect to the orbital coefficients cy (eq. (11.39)). This leads after a fair amount of algebra to the self-consistent Hartree-Fock equations ... 

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 problem of time evolution for a Hamiltonian bilinear in the generators (Levine, 1982) has been extensively discussed. The proposed solutions include the use of variational principles (Tishby and Levine, 1984), mean-field self-consistent methods (Meyer, Kucar, and Cederbaum, 1988), time-dependent constants of the motion (Levine, 1982), and numerous others, which we hope to discuss in detail in a sequel to this volume. 

In semiempirical calculations variational principle itself is manipulated, or to give another interpretation, the molecular Hamiltonian is modified in order to save computation time. Two semiempirical methods differing in the concept and the degree of sophistication have been applied frequently to ion-molecule complexes and therefore will be mentioned briefly. 

The scheme we employ uses a Cartesian laboratory system of coordinates which avoids the spurious small kinetic and Coriolis energy terms that arise when center of mass coordinates are used. However, the overall translational and rotational degrees of freedom are still present. The unconstrained coupled dynamics of all participating electrons and atomic nuclei is considered explicitly. The particles move under the influence of the instantaneous forces derived from the Coulombic potentials of the system Hamiltonian and the time-dependent system wave function. The time-dependent variational principle is used to derive the dynamical equations for a given form of time-dependent system wave function. The choice of wave function ansatz and of sets of atomic basis functions are the limiting approximations of the method. Wave function parameters, such as molecular orbital coefficients, z,(f), average nuclear positions and momenta, and Pfe(0, etc., carry the time dependence and serve as the dynamical variables of the method. Therefore, the parameterization of the system wave function is important, and we have found that wave functions expressed as generalized coherent states are particularly useful. A minimal implementation of the method [16,17] employs a wave function of the form ... 

It is highly desirable to formulate a variational principle valid for the Dirac Hamiltonian. The first attempts are due to Drake and Goldman [9], Wood etal. [10], Talman [4] and Datta and Deviah [5], Very recently the subject has been discussed in detail by Griesemer and Siedentop [6] and also by Kutzelnigg [7] andby Quiney efa/. [11],... 

This is referred as BO ansatz. This ansatz is taken as a variational trial function. Terms beyond the leading order in m/M are neglected m is the electronic and M is nuclear mass, respectively). The problem with expansion (4) is that functions /(r, R) contain except bound states also continuum function since it includes the centre of mass (COM) motion. Variation principle does not apply to continuum states. To avoid this problem we can separate COM motion. The remaining Hamiltonian for the relative motion of nuclei and electrons has then bound state solution. But there is a problem, because this separation mixes electronic with nuclear coordinates and also there is a question how to define molecule-fixed coordinate system. This is in detail discussed by Sutcliffe [5]. In the recent paper by Kutzelnigg [8] this problem is also discussed and it is shown how to derive adiabatic corrections using, as he called it, the Bom-Handy ansatz. There are few important steps to arrive at formula for a diabatic corrections. Firstly, one separates off COM motion. Secondly, (very important step) one does not specify the relative coordinates (which are to some extent arbitrary). In this way one arrives at relative Hamiltonian Hrd [8] with trial wavefunction If we make BO ansatz... 

It is clear from the variational principle for the wavefunction that if Fq is A-representable, then Tr[HQ jvFQ] >Eg s Hf ) for every reduced Hamiltonian. To show that the converse is true, we need three key facts ... 

To get some idea of the use of trial wave functions and the variation principle, evaluate the expectation value of the energy using the Hydrogen atom Hamiltonian, and normalized Is orbitals with variable Z. That is, evaluate ... 

The application of G-spinor basis sets can be illustrated most conveniently by constructing the matrix operators needed for DCB calculations. The DCB equations can be derived from a variational principle along familiar nonrelativistic lines [7], [8, Chapter 3]. It has usually been assumed that the absence of a global lower bound to the Dirac spectrum invalidates this procedure it has now been established [16] that the upper spectrum has a lower bound when the trial functions lie in an appropriate domain. This theorem covers the variational derivation of G-spinor matrix DCB equations. Sucher s repeated assertions [17] that the DCB Hamiltonian is fatally diseased and that the operators must be surrounded with energy projection operators can be safely forgotten. 

We demonstrated that by the selection of a representation of the Dirac Hamiltonian in the spinor space one may strongly influence the performance of the variational principle. In a vast majority of implementations the standard Pauli representation has been used. Consequently, computational algorithms developed in relativistic theory of many-electron systems have been constructed so that they are applicable in this representation only. The conditions, under which the results of these implementations are reliable, are very well understood and efficient numerical codes are available for both atomic and molecular calculations (see e.g. [16]). However, the representation of Weyl, if the external potential is non-spherical, or the representation of Biedenharn, in spherically-symmetric cases, seem to be attractive and, so far, hardly explored options. 

So, the question arises of how we might modify the HF wave function to obtain a lower electronic energy when we operate on that modified wave function with the Hamiltonian. By the variational principle, such a construction would be a more accurate wave function. We cannot do better than the HF wave function with a single determinant, so one obvious choice is to construct a wave function as a linear combination of multiple determinants, i.e.. 

Kerman, A.K. and Koonin, S.E. (1976). Hamiltonian formulation of time-dependent variational principles for the many-body system, Annals Phys. 100, 332-358. 

In order to obtain the potential energy surfaces associated with chemical reactions we, typically, need the lowest eigenvalue of the electronic Hamiltonian. Unlike systems such as a harmonic oscillator and the hydrogen atom, most problems in quantum mechanics cannot be solved exactly. There are, however, approximate methods that can be used to obtain solutions to almost any degree of accuracy. One such method is the variational method. This method is based on the variational principle, which says... 

The theory of the / -matrix can be understood most clearly in a variational formulation. The essential derivation for a single channel was given by Kohn [202], as a variational principle for the radial logarithmic derivative. If h is the radial Hamiltonian operator, the Schrodinger variational functional is... 

It is clear that the variational principle is observed because the expectation value of the Hamiltonian H with respect to the transformed wavefunction satisfies the inequality... 

Variational methods [6] for the solution of either the Schrodinger equation or its perturbation expansion can be used to obtain approximate eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of this Hamiltonian. The Ritz variational principle,... 

Restricting the wave function by the form eq. (1.142) allows one to significantly reduce the calculation costs for all characteristics of a many-fermion system. Inserting eq. (1.142) into the energy expression (for the expectation value of the electronic Hamiltonian eq. (1.27)) and applying to it the variational principle with the additional condition of orthonormalization of the system of the occupied spin-orbitals 4>k (known in this context as molecular spin-orbitals) yields the system of integrodiffer-ential equations of the form (see e.g. [27]) ... 

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