Slater determinants mathematical methods

Because of the success of the r12 method in the applications, one had almost universally in the literature adopted the idea of the necessity of introducing the interelectronic distances r j explicitly in the total wave function (see, e.g., Coulson 1938). It was there-fore essential for the development that Slater,39 Boys, and some other authors at about 1950 started emphasizing the fact that a wave function of any desired accuracy could be obtained by superposition of configurations, i.e., by summing a series of Slater determinants (Eq. 11.38) built up from a complete basic one-electron set. Numerical applications on atoms and molecules were started by means of the new modern electronic computers, and the results have been very encouraging. It is true that a wave function delivered by the machine may be the sum of a very large number of determinants, but the result may afterwards be mathematically simplified and physically interpreted by means of natural orbitals.22,17... 

Ab initio calculations are based on first principles using molecular orbital (MO) calculations based on Gaussian functions. Combinations of Gaussian functions yield Slater-type orbitals (STOs), also called Slater determinants. STOs are mathematical functions closely related to exact solutions for the hydrogen atom. In their ultimate applications, ab initio methods would use Gaussian-type wave functions rather than STOs. The ab initio method assumes that from the point of view of the electrons the nuclei are stationary, whereas... 

QM grew out of studies of blackbody radiation and of the photoelectric effect. Besides QM, radioactivity and relativity contributed to the transition from classical to modem physics. The classical Rutherford nuclear atom, the Bohr atom, and the Schrodinger wave-mechanical atom are discussed. Hybridization, wavefunctions, Slater determinants and other basic concepts are explained. For obtaining eigenvectors and eigenvalues from the secular equations the elegant and simple matrix diagonalization method is explained and used. All the necessary mathematics is explained. 

A concrete example of the variational principle is provided by the Hartree-Fock approximation. This method asserts that the electrons can be treated independently, and that the -electron wavefimction of the atom or molecule can be written as a Slater determinant made up of orbitals. These orbitals are defined to be those which minimize the expectation value of the energy. Since the general mathematical form of these orbitals is not known (especially in molecules), then the resulting problem is highly nonlinear and formidably difficult to solve. However, as mentioned in subsection (A 1.1.3.2). a common approach is to assume that the orbitals can be written as linear combinations of one-electron basis functions. If the basis functions are fixed, then the optimization problem reduces to that of finding the best set of coefficients for each orbital. This tremendous simplification provided a revolutionary advance for the application of the Hartree-Fock method to molecules, and was originally proposed by Roothaan in 1951. A similar form of the trial function occurs when it is assumed that the exact (as opposed to Hartree-Fock) wavefimction can be written as a linear combination of Slater determinants (see equation (A 1.1.104 ) ). In the conceptually simpler latter case, the objective is to minimize an expression of the form... 

In the course of study, students should master material that is both simple and complex. Much of this involves familiarity with the set of mathematical tools repeatedly used throughout this book. The Appendices provide ample reference to such a toolbox. These include matrix algebra, determinants, vector spaces, vector orthogonalization, secular equations, matrix diagonalization, point group theory, delta functions, finding conditional extrema (Lagrange multipliers, penalty function methods), Slater-Condon rules, as well as secondary quantization. 

According to the ab initio molecular orbital theory methodology, atomic orbitals (set of functions, also called basis sets) combine in a way to form molecnlar orbitals that snrronnd the molecule. The molecular orbital theory considers the molecnlar wave function as an antisymmetiized product of orthonormal spatial molecular orbitals. Then they are constructed as a Slater determinant [56], Essentially, the calculations initially use a basis set, atomic wave functions [57, 58], to constract the molecular orbitals. The first and basic ab initio molecular orbital theory approach to solve the Schrodinger equation is the Hartree-Fock (HF) method [59, 60], Almost all the ab initio methodologies have the same basic numerical approach but they differ in mathematical approximations. As it is clear that finding the exact solution for the Schrodinger equation, for a molecular system, is not possible, various approaches and approximations are used to find the reliable to close-to-accurate solutions [61-68]. 

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