Nuclear kinetic energy operator

The effective nuclear kinetic energy operator due to the vector potential is formulated by multiplying the adiabatic eigenfunction of the system, t t(/ , r) with the HLH phase exp(i/2ai ctan(r/R)), and operating with T R,r), as defined in Eq. fl), on the product function and after little algebraic simplification, one can obtain the following effective kinetic energy operator. 

The general form of the effective nuclear kinetic energy operator (T) can be written as... 

The coordinates p,Tx are called the principal axes of inertia symmetrized hyperspherical coordinates. The nuclear kinetic energy operator in these coordinates is given by... 

Here, t is the nuclear kinetic energy operator, and so all terms describing the electronic kinetic energy, electron-electron and electron-nuclear interactions, as well as the nuclear-nuclear interaction potential function, are collected together. This sum of terms is often called the clamped nuclei Hamiltonian as it describes the electrons moving around the nuclei at a particular configrrration R. 

In this picture, the nuclei are moving over a PES provided by the function V(R), driven by the nuclear kinetic energy operator, 7. More details on the derivation of this equation and its validity are given in Appendix A. The potential function is provided by the solutions to the electronic Schrddinger equation. 

We assume that the nuclei are so slow moving relative to electrons that we may regard them as fixed masses. This amounts to separation of the Schroedinger equation into two parts, one for nuclei and one for electrons. We then drop the nuclear kinetic energy operator, but we retain the intemuclear repulsion terms, which we know from the nuclear charges and the intemuclear distances. We retain all terms that involve electrons, including the potential energy terms due to attractive forces between nuclei and electrons and those due to repulsive forces... 

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... 

Pj and p2 represent the displacement vectors of the nuclei A and D (the corresponding polar coordinates are p1 cji, and p2, < )2, respectively) p, and pc are the displacement vectors and pT, r and pc, <[)f the corresponding polar coordinates of the terminal nuclei at the (collective) trans-bending and cis-bending vibrations, respectively. As a consequence of the use of these symmetry coordinates the nuclear kinetic energy operator for small-amplitude bending vibrations represents the kinetic energy of two uncoupled 2D harmonic oscillators ... 

The problem still is to finding a complete set of solutions to the molecular Hamiltonian H that contains nuclear kinetic energy operators ... 

Here Q represents a vector of normal nuclear coordinates Qu Q2>- , Tn is the nuclear kinetic energy operator, and HSF(Q) is the electronic spin-free Hamiltonian... 

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 ... 

It can be safely assumed that the contribution of the term involving the nuclear kinetic energy operator is negligibly small. The coupling matrix element then assumes the form... 

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