Occupied orbitals, calculated

Not all Iterative semi-empirical or ah iniiio calculations converge for all cases. For SCF calculation s of electronic stnictiire. system s with a small energy gap between the highest occupied orbital and the lowest unoccupied orbital may not converge or may converge slowly. (They are generally poorly described by the Ilartree-Foch method.)... 

Introductory descriptions of Hartree-Fock calculations [often using Rootaan s self-consistent field (SCF) method] focus on singlet systems for which all electron spins are paired. By assuming that the calculation is restricted to two electrons per occupied orbital, the computation can be done more efficiently. This is often referred to as a spin-restricted Hartree-Fock calculation or RHF. 

Semiempirical programs often use the half-electron approximation for radical calculations. The half-electron method is a mathematical technique for treating a singly occupied orbital in an RHF calculation. This results in consistent total energy at the expense of having an approximate wave function and orbital energies. Since a single-determinant calculation is used, there is no spin contamination. 

In an Extended Hiickel calculation, the Aufbau population of molecular orbitals is unambiguous. The calculation method is non-iterative and the total energy is proportional to the sum of the energies of occupied orbitals. The Aufbau guarantees the lowest energy wave function. 

The second step determines the LCAO coefficients by standard methods for matrix diagonalization. In an Extended Hiickel calculation, this results in molecular orbital coefficients and orbital energies. Ab initio and NDO calculations repeat these two steps iteratively because, in addition to the integrals over atomic orbitals, the elements of the energy matrix depend upon the coefficients of the occupied orbitals. HyperChem ends the iterations when the coefficients or the computed energy no longer change the solution is then self-consistent. The method is known as Self-Consistent Field (SCF) calculation. 

The calculation mixes all single determinant wavefunctions that can be obtained from the ground state by exciting electrons from a subset of the occupied orbitals (of the ground state) to a subset of the unoccupied orbitals. The subsets are specified as a fixed number (highest occupied or lowest unoccupied) or by an energy criterion associated with the energy difference between the occupied orbital and the unoccupied orbital. 

Eor transition metals the splitting of the d orbitals in a ligand field is most readily done using EHT. In all other semi-empirical methods, the orbital energies depend on the electron occupation. HyperChem s molecular orbital calculations give orbital energy spacings that differ from simple crystal field theory predictions. The total molecular wavefunction is an antisymmetrized product of the occupied molecular orbitals. The virtual set of orbitals are the residue of SCE calculations, in that they are deemed least suitable to describe the molecular wavefunction. 

Although not strictly part of a model chemistry, there is a third component to every Gaussian calculation involving how electron spin is handled whether it is performed using an open shell model or a closed shell model the two options are also referred to as unrestricted and restricted calculations, respectively. For closed shell molecules, having an even number of electrons divided into pairs of opposite spin, a spin restricted model is the default. In other words, closed shell calculations use doubly occupied orbitals, each containing two electrons of opposite spin. 

The simplest antisymmetric function that is a combination of molecular orbitals is a determinant. Before forming it, however, we need to account for a factor we ve neglected so far electron spin. Electrons can have spin up i+Vi) or down (-V2). Equation 20 assumes that each molecular orbital holds only one electron. However, most calculations are closed shell calculations, using doubly occupied orbitals, holding two electrons of opposite spin. For the moment, we will limit our discussion to this case. 

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