Large molecules configurational expansion

As mentioned in section 1, the combination of the CI method and semiempirical Hamiltonians is an attractive method for calculations of excited states of large organic systems. However, some of the variants of the CI ansatz are not in practical use for large molecules even at the semiempirical level. In particular, this holds for full configuration interaction method (FCI). The truncated CI expansions suffer from several problems like the lack of size-consistency, and violation of Hellmann-Feynman theorem. Additionally, the calculations of NLO properties bring the problem of minimal level of excitation in CI expansion neccessary for the coirect description of electrical response calculated within the SOS formalism. 

Equation (10) directs attention to a number of important characteristics of the molecular expansion factor a. In the first place, it is predicted to increase slowly with molecular weight (assuming t/ i(1 — 0/T) >0) and without limit even when the molecular weight becomes very large. Thus, the root-mean-square end-to-end distance of the molecule should increase more rapidly than in proportion to the square root of the molecular weight. This follows from the theory of random chain configuration according to which the unperturbed root-mean-square end- o-end distance is proportional to (Chap. X), whereas /r = ay/rl. 

The direction for future work seems to point towards the inclusion of type electrons and the use of configuration interaction. The availability of computers fast and large enough may make possible the undertaking of accurate calculations such as those carried out at present for smaller molecules. It could even be that expansion in terms of gaussian functions proves to be feasible for these systems. 

The HF CO method is especially efficient if the Bloch orbitals are calculated in the form of a linear combination of atomic orbitals (LCAO)1 2 since in this case the large amount of experience collected in the field of molecular quantum mechanics can be used in crystal HF studies. The atomic basis orbitals applied for the above mentioned expansion are usually optimized in atoms and molecules. They can be Slater-type exponential functions if the integrals are evaluated in momentum space3 or Gaussian orbitals if one prefers to work in configuration space. The specific computational problems arising from the infinite periodic crystal potential will be discussed later. 

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