Kinetic energy operator electronic states

The derivative (nonadiabatic) coupling, ffy, is the term neglected in the Bom-Oppenheimer approximation that is responsible for nonadiabatic transitions between different states I and. /. It originates from the nuclear kinetic energy operator operating on the electronic wavefunctions ijf] and is given by... 

A detailed discussion of the theoretical evaluation of the adiabatic correction for a molecular system is beyond the scope of this book. The full development involves, among other matters, the investigation of the action of the kinetic energy operators for the nuclei (which involve inverse nuclear masses) on the electronic wave function. Such terms are completely ignored in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. In order to go beyond the Born-Oppenheimer approximation as a first step one can expand the molecular wave function in terms of a set of Born-Oppenheimer states (designated as lec (S, r ))... 

After the separation of the kinetic energy operator due to the center-of-mass motion from the Hamiltonian, the Hamiltonian describes the internal motions of electrons and nuclei in the system. These in the BO approximation can be separated into the vibrational and rotational motions of the nuclear frame of the molecule and the electronic motion that only parametrically depends on the instantenous positions of the nuclei. When the BO approximation is removed, the electronic and nuclear motions become coupled and the only good quantum numbers, which can be used to quantize the stationary states of the system, are the principle quantum number, the quantum number quantizing the square of the total (nuclear and electronic) squared angular momentum, and the quantum number quantizing the projection of the total angular momentum vector on a selected direction (usually the z axis). The separation of different rotational states is an important feamre that can considerably simplify the calculations. 

To consider the nature of this approximation one should notice that the nuclear kinetic energy operator acts both on the electronic and the nuclear parts of the BO wavefunction. Hence, the deviations from the adiabatic approximation will be measured by the matrix elements of the nuclear kinetic energy, T(Q), and of the nuclear momentum. The approximate adiabatic wavefunctions have the following off-diagonal matrix elements between different vibronic states ... 

Here Ho is the kinetic energy operator of valence electrons Vps is the pseudopotential [40,41] which defines the atomic core. V = eUn(r) is the Hartree energy which satisfies the Poisson equation ArUn(r) = —4nep(r) with proper boundary conditions as discussed in the previous subsection. The last term is the exchange-correlation potential Vxc [p which is a functional of the density. Many forms of 14c exist and we use the simplest one which is the local density approximation [42] (LDA). One may also consider the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) [43,44] which can be implemented for transport calculations without too much difficulty [45]. Importantly a self-consistent solution of Eq. (2) is necessary because Hks is a functional of the charge density p. One constructs p from the KS states Ts, p(r) = (r p r) = ns Fs(r) 2, where p is the density matrix,... 

It is clear that with a high density of states the theoretical investigations of electronic spectra must sometimes go beyond a traditional BO and non-relativistic analysis that only refers to energy criteria, and that in the description of spectroscopic properties smaller terms of the Hamiltonian must be accounted for. The major corrections to the BO electrostatic Hamiltonian is the non-adiabatic coupling induced by the nuclear kinetic energy operator, and the electronic SOC treated in the present review. 

In the case of internal conversion between states of equal multiplicity A = is the kinetic energy operator of the nuclei. In the case of weak coupling the matrix element of the perturbation operator can be split into an electronic part and a contribution due to the vibrational terms which, with the help of further simplifying assumptions, can be written as the Franck-Condon overlap integral ... 

Diabatic electronic states (previously termed crude adiabatic states ) are defined as slowly varying functions of the nuclear geometry in the vicinity of the reference geometry [9-11]. The final vibronic-coupling Hamiltonian is obtained by adding the nuclear kinetic-energy operator which is assumed to be diagonal in the diabatic representation. 

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