Method Hartree-Fock

While the equations of the Hartree-Fock approach can be rigorously derived, we present them post hoc and give a physical description of the approximations leading to them. The Hartree-Fock method introduces an effective one-electron Hamiltonian, as in equation (47) on page 193  

Guess the position of each electron, that is, you guess each occupied orbital /j. 

Guess the average potential that a specific electron would feel coming from the other electrons that is, you guess at the Fock operator. 

Solve equation (58) for anew guess at the positions of the electrons. 

Repeat the procedure until the wave function for an electron is consistent with the field that it and the other electrons produce. 

The original ab initio approach to calculating electronic properties of molecules was the Hartree-Fock method [31,32,33,34]. Its appeal is that it preserves the concept of atomic orbitals, one-electron functions, describing the movement of the electron in the mean field of all other electrons. Although there are some inherent deficiencies in the method, especially those referred to the absence of correlation effects. Improvements have included the introduction of many-body perturbation theory by Mollet and Plesset (MP) [35] (MP2 to second-order MP4 to fourth order). The computer power required for Hartree-Fock methods makes their use prohibitive for molecules containing more than very few atoms. 

Suppose we would like to approximate the wave function of N electrons. Let us assume for the moment that the electrons have no effect on each other. If this is true, the Hamiltonian for the electrons may be written as 

The energy of this wave function is the sum of the spin orbital energies, E = Eji + + EjH. We have already seen a brief glimpse of this approximation to the /-electron wave function, the Hartree product, in Section 1.3. 

The coefficient of (1 / /2) is simply a normalization factor. This expression builds in a physical description of electron exchange implicitly it changes sign if two electrons are exchanged. This expression has other advantages. For example, it does not distinguish between electrons and it disappears if two electrons have the same coordinates or if two of the one-electron wave functions are the same. This means that the Slater determinant satisfies 

The description above may seem a little unhelpful since we know that in any interesting system the electrons interact with one another. The many different wave-function-based approaches to solving the Schrodinger equation differ in how these interactions are approximated. To understand the types of approximations that can be used, it is worth looking at the simplest approach, the Hartree-Fock method, in some detail. There are also many similarities between Hartree-Fock calculations and the DFT calculations we have described in the previous sections, so understanding this method is a useful way to view these ideas from a slightly different perspective. 

In a Hartree-Fock (HF) calculation, we fix the positions of the atomic nuclei and aim to determine the wave function of fV-interacting electrons. The first part of describing an HF calculation is to define what equations are solved. The Schrodinger equation for each electron is written as 

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Head-Gordon M and Pople J A 1988 Optimization of wavefunotion and geometry in the finite basis Hartree-Fock method J. Phys. Chem. 92 3063... 

The application of density functional theory to isolated, organic molecules is still in relative infancy compared with the use of Hartree-Fock methods. There continues to be a steady stream of publications designed to assess the performance of the various approaches to DFT. As we have discussed there is a plethora of ways in which density functional theory can be implemented with different functional forms for the basis set (Gaussians, Slater type orbitals, or numerical), different expressions for the exchange and correlation contributions within the local density approximation, different expressions for the gradient corrections and different ways to solve the Kohn-Sham equations to achieve self-consistency. This contrasts with the situation for Hartree-Fock calculations, wlrich mostly use one of a series of tried and tested Gaussian basis sets and where there is a substantial body of literature to help choose the most appropriate method for incorporating post-Hartree-Fock methods, should that be desired. 

Within the periodic Hartree-Fock approach it is possible to incorporate many of the variants that we have discussed, such as LFHF or RHF. Density functional theory can also be used. I his makes it possible to compare the results obtained from these variants. Whilst density functional theory is more widely used for solid-state applications, there are certain types of problem that are currently more amenable to the Hartree-Fock method. Of particular ii. Icvance here are systems containing unpaired electrons, two recent examples being the clci tronic and magnetic properties of nickel oxide and alkaline earth oxides doped with alkali metal ions (Li in CaO) [Dovesi et al. 2000]. 

Dovesi R, R Orlando, C Roetti, C Pisani and V R Saunders 2000. The Periodic Hartree-Fock Method and Its Implementation in the CRYSTAL Code. Physica Status Solidi B217 63-88. 

A variation on the HF procedure is the way that orbitals are constructed to reflect paired or unpaired electrons. If the molecule has a singlet spin, then the same orbital spatial function can be used for both the a and P spin electrons in each pair. This is called the restricted Hartree-Fock method (RHF). 

Another way of constructing wave functions for open-shell molecules is the restricted open shell Hartree-Fock method (ROHF). In this method, the paired electrons share the same spatial orbital thus, there is no spin contamination. The ROHF technique is more difficult to implement than UHF and may require slightly more CPU time to execute. ROHF is primarily used for cases where spin contamination is large using UHF. 

The premise behind DFT is that the energy of a molecule can be determined from the electron density instead of a wave function. This theory originated with a theorem by Hoenburg and Kohn that stated this was possible. The original theorem applied only to finding the ground-state electronic energy of a molecule. A practical application of this theory was developed by Kohn and Sham who formulated a method similar in structure to the Hartree-Fock method. 

Not all iterative semi-empirical or ab initio calculations converge for all cases. For SCF calculations of electronic structure, systems with a small energy gap between the highest occupied orbital and the lowest unoccupied orbital may not converge or may converge slowly. (They are generally poorly described by the Hartree-Fock method.)... 

Each cell in the chart defines a model chemistry. The columns correspond to differcni theoretical methods and the rows to different basis sets. The level of correlation increases as you move to the right across any row, with the Hartree-Fock method jI the extreme left (including no correlation), and the Full Configuration Interaction method at the right (which fuUy accounts for electron correlation). In general, computational cost and accuracy increase as you move to the right as well. The relative costs of different model chemistries for various job types is discussed in... 

As we have seen throughout this book, the Hartree-Fock method provides a reasonable model for a wide range of problems and molecular systems. However, Hartree-Fock theory also has limitations. They arise principally from the fact that Hartree-Fock theory does not include a full treatment of the effects of electron correlation the energy contributions arising from electrons interacting with one another. For systems and situations where such effects are important, Hartree-Fock results may not be satisfactory. The theory and methodology underlying electron correlation is discussed in Appendix A. 

So far, we have considered only the restricted Hartree-Fock method. For open shell systems, an unrestricted method, capable of treating unpaired electrons, is needed. For this case, the alpha and beta electrons are in different orbitals, resulting in two sets of molecular orbital expansion coefficients ... 

All the early work was concerned with atoms, with Sir William Hartree regarded as the father of the technique. His son, Douglas R. Hartree, published the definitive book, The Calculation of Atomic Structures, in 1957, and in this he derived the atomic HF equations and described numerical algorithms for their solution. Charlotte Froese Fischer was a research student working under the guidance of D. R. Hartree, and she published her own definitive book. The Hartree—Fock Method for Atoms A Numerical Approach in 1977. The Appendix lists a number of freely available atomie structure programs. Most of these can be obtained from the Computer Physics Communications Program Library. 

The first two kinds of terms are called derivative integrals, they are the derivatives of integrals that are well known in molecular structure theory, and they are easy to evaluate. Terms of the third kind pose a problem, and we have to solve a set of equations called the coupled Hartree-Fock equations in order to find them. The coupled Hartree-Fock method is far from new one of the earliest papers is that of Gerratt and Mills. 

The Hartree-Fock equations have to be solved by the coupled Hartree-Fock method. The following article affords a typical example. 

Fischer, C. F. (1977) The Hartree-Fock Method for Atoms A Numerical Approach, Wiley, New York. 

Trioxane 210 has been used as a model system by Gu and coworkers to study the antimalarial drug artemisinin 211 (Scheme 137) [97CPL234, 99JST103]. It is the boat/twist form rather than the chair conformer of 210 that describes the subunit in 211. Moreover, geometric parameters and vibrational frequencies can only reliably be computed at the DFT level and by post-Hartree-Fock methods. B3-LYP/6-31G calculations on the conformers of 3,3,6,6-tetramethyl-1,2,4,5-tetroxane show that the chair conformer is stabilized with respect to the twisted conformer by about -2.8 kcal/mol [00JST85]. No corresponding boat conformer was found. 

The systems discussed in this chapter give some examples using different theoretical models for the interpretation of, primarily, UPS valence band data, both for pristine and doped systems as well as for the initial stages of interface formation between metals and conjugated systems. Among the various methods used in the examples are the following semiempirical Hartree-Fock methods such as the Modified Neglect of Diatomic Overlap (MNDO) [31, 32) and Austin Model 1 (AMI) [33] the non-empirical Valence Effective Hamiltonian (VEH) pseudopotential method [3, 34J and ab initio Hartree-Fock techniques. 

Of course the Hartree-Fock method and the configuration interaction... 

But alas most of what has been described so far concerning density theory applies in theory rather than in practice. The fact that the Thomas-Fermi method is capable of yielding a universal solution for all atoms in the periodic table is a potentially attractive feature but is generally not realized in practice. The attempts to implement the ideas originally due to Thomas and Fermi have not quite materialized. This has meant a return to the need to solve a number of equations separately for each individual atom as one does in the Hartree-Fock method and other ab initio methods using atomic orbitals. 

Extension of Hartree-Fock method using pure spin functions... 

This analysis shows that a refinement of the Hartree-Fock method by means of a correlation factor g(r12> rlz, r2Z,. . . ) seems to be possible along several lines, but the numerical work involved... 

Eden, R. J., Phys. Rev. 99, 1418, "Nuclear saturation a generalized Hartree-Fock method."... 

Pratt, G. W., Jr., Phys. Rev. 102, 1303, "Unrestricted Hartree-Fock method." The basis of the method with an example on the Li atom. 

Pure spin states with Hartree-Fock method, 227, 230... 

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