Hartree-Fock method, definition

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. 

Some advocates of DFT believe that DFT will displace the Hartree-Fock method and Hartree-Fock based correlation methods (MP, CC, Cl) and become the dominant way of doing quantum-chemistry calculations and the main way of theoretically interpreting chemical concepts. [DFT has been used to provide quantitative definitions of such chemical concepts as electronegativity, hardness and softness, and reactivity see Parr and Yang, Chapters 5 and 10 and W. Kohn, A. D. Becke, and R. G. Parr, / Phys. Chem., 100,12974 (1 ).]... 

However, the Hartree-Fock method does not treat (by definition) what is called electron correlation, which physically represents instantaneous interactions between individual electrons rather than the average as done in HF. Electron correlation is a key factor to find important properties of chemical interest such as binding energies. One way to solve this problem is to include additional determinants to the wavefunction. Unfortunately, improving the single-determinant wavefimction, by adding additional determinants, yields methods that are extremely expensive in computational resources. 

This arbitrariness most clearly manifests itself in going beyond the scope of the HF approximation, as evidenced by a wide variety of definitions for molecular systems available in the literature for valences and bond orders in the case of post-Hartree-Fock methods for molecular systems [570,578-580]. In post-HF methods local characteristics of molecular electronic structure are usually defined in terms of the first-order density matrix and in this sense there is no conceptual difference between HF and post-HF approaches [577]. It is convenient to introduce natural (molecular) spin orbitals (NSOs), i.e. those that diagonalise the one-particle density matrix. The first-order density matrix in the most general case represents some ensemble of one-electron states described by NSOs... 

An alternative to the operator approach is to start from the matrix equations (Filatov 2002). Then the elimination the small-component, the construction of the transformation and the transformed Fock matrix are all straightforward. There is no difficulty with interpretation because the inverse of a matrix is well defined. The matrix to be inverted is positive definite so it presents no numerical problems. The drawback of a matrix method is that the basis set for the small component must be used, at least to construct the potentials that appear in the inverse. In that case, the same number of integrals is required as in the full Dirac-Hartree-Fock method, and there is no reduction in the integral work or the construction of the Fock matrix. 

The purpose of this contribution is to give an overview of the results which center around the atomic density function and the recovery of the periodicity. Since all the calculations are based on atomic density functions, it is appropriate to revisit the construction of these densities in some depth. First a workable definition of the density function is established in the framework of the multi-configuration Hartree-Fock method (MCHF) [2] and the spherical harmonic content of the density function is discussed. A spherical density function is established in a natural way, by using spherical tensor operators. The proposed expression can be evaluated for any multi-configuration state function corresponding to an atom in a particular well-defined state and a recently developed extension of the MCHF code [3] is used for that purpose. Three illustrative examples are given. In the next section relativistic density functions for the relativistic Dirac-Hartree-Fock method [4] are defined. The latter will be used for a thorough analysis of the influence of relativistic effects on electron density functions later on in this paper. 

Confusion is created by the often-quoted results of calculations by Latter that did predict some of the above ordering on the badis of the rather crude Thomas-Fermi method of approximation 20). More recent Hartree-Fock calculations on atoms show, for example, that the 3d level is definitely of lower energy than that of 4s (21). 

It is apparent that the Hartree-Fock level is characterized by an enormous average deviation from experiment, but standard post-HF methods for including correlation effects such as MP2 and QCISD also err to an extent that renders their results completely useless for this kind of thermochemistry. We should not, however, be overly disturbed by these errors since the use of small basis sets such as 6-31G(d) is a definite no-no for correlated wave function based quantum chemical methods if problems like atomization energies are to be addressed. It suffices to point out the general trend that these methods systematically underestimate the atomization energies due to an incomplete recovery of correlation effects, a... 

Since rigorous theoretical treatments of molecular structure have become more and more common in recent years, there exists a definite need for simple connections between such treatments and traditional chemical concepts. One approach to this problem which has proved useful is the method of localized orbitals. It yields a clear picture of a molecule in terms of bonds and lone pairs and is particularly well suited for comparing the electronic structures of different molecules. So far, it has been applied mainly within the closed-shell Hartree-Fock approximation, but it is our feeling that, in the future, localized representations will find more and more widespread use, including applications to wavefunctions other than the closed-shell Hartree-Fock functions. 

Over the last years, the basic concepts embedded within the SCRF formalism have undergone some significant improvements, and there are several commonly used variants on this idea. To exemplify the different methods and how their results differ, one recent work from this group [52] considered the sensitivity of results to the particular variant chosen. Due to its dependence upon only the dipole moment of the solute, the older approach is referred to herein as the dipole variant. The dipole method is also crude in the sense that the solute is placed in a spherical cavity within the solute medium, not a very realistic shape in most cases. The polarizable continuum method (PCM) [53,54,55] embeds the solute in a cavity that more accurately mimics the shape of the molecule, created by a series of overlapping spheres. The reaction field is represented by an apparent surface charge approach. The standard PCM approach utilizes an integral equation formulation (IEF) [56,57], A variant of this method is the conductor-polarized continuum model (CPCM) [58] wherein the apparent charges distributed on the cavity surface are such that the total electrostatic potential cancels on the surface. The self-consistent isodensity PCM procedure [59] determines the cavity self-consistently from an isodensity surface. The UAHF (United Atom model for Hartree-Fock/6-31 G ) definition [60] was used for the construction of the solute cavity. 

This is closely analogous to the Hartree equations (Eq. (1.7)). The Kohn-Sham orbitals are separable by definition (the electrons they describe are noninteracting) analogous to the HF MOs. Eq. (1.50) can, therefore, be solved using a similar set of steps as was done in the Hartree-Fock-Roothaan method. 

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