Molecules small, electron correlation

A. C. Hurley, Electron Correlation in Small Molecules Academic Press, London (1976). 

Paldus J, Li X (1999) Electron Correlation in Small Molecules Grafting Cl onto CC. 203 1-20 Paleos CM, Tsiourvas D (2003) Molecular Recognition and Hydrogen-Bonded Amphiphilies. 227 1-29... 

Group 2 complexes are formally electron deficient and conformationally floppy only small energies (often only 1-2 kcal mol-1) are required to alter their geometries by large amounts (e.g., bond angles by 20° or more). In such cases, the inclusion of electron-correlation effects becomes critical to an accurate description of the molecules structures. Both HF/MP2 and density functional theory (DFT) methods have been applied to organoalkaline earth compounds. DFT approaches, which implicitly incorporate electron correlation in a computationally efficient form, are generally the more widely used. Molecular orbital calculations that successfully reproduce bent... 

Accounting for electron correlation in a second step, via the mixing of a limited number of Slater determinants in the total wave function. Electron correlation is very important for correct treatment of interelectronic interactions and for a quantitative description of covalence effects and of the structure of multielec-tronic states. Accounting completely for the total electronic correlation is computationally extremely difficult, and is only possible for very small molecules, within a limited basis set. Formally, electron correlation can be divided into static, when all Slater determinants corresponding to all possible electron populations of frontier orbitals are considered, and dynamic correlation, which takes into account the effects of dynamical screening of interelectron interaction. 

The study of behavior of many-electron systems such as atoms, molecules, and solids under the action of time-dependent (TD) external fields, which includes interaction with radiation, has been an important area of research. In the linear response regime, where one considers the external held to cause a small perturbation to the initial ground state of the system, one can obtain many important physical quantities such as polarizabilities, dielectric functions, excitation energies, photoabsorption spectra, van der Waals coefficients, etc. In many situations, for example, in the case of interaction of many-electron systems with strong laser held, however, it is necessary to go beyond linear response for investigation of the properties. Since a full theoretical description based on accurate solution of TD Schrodinger equation is not yet within the reach of computational capabilities, new methods which can efficiently handle the TD many-electron correlations need to be explored, and time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) is one such valuable approach. 

During the last decade MO-theory became by far the most well developed quantum mechanical method for numerical calculations on molecules. Small molecules, mainly diatomics, or highly symmetric structures were treated most accurately. Now applicability and limitations of the independent particle, or Hartree-Fock (H. F.), approximation in calculations of molecular properties are well understood. An impressive number of molecular calculations including electron correlation is available today. Around the equilibrium geometries of molecules, electron-pair theories were found to be the most economical for actual calculations of correlation effects ). Unfortunately, accurate calculations as mentioned above are beyond the present computational possibilities for larger molecular structures. Therefore approximations have to be introduced in the investigation of problems of chemical interest. Consequently the reliability of calculated results has to be checked carefully for every kind of application. Three types of approximations are of interest in connection with this article. 

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