Operators Dirac-Coulomb

The relativistic many-electron Hamiltonian cannot be written in closed form it may be derived perturbatively from quantum electrodynamics [1]. The simplest form is the Dirac-Coulomb (DC) Hamiltonian, where the nonrelativistic one-electron terms in the Schrodinger equation are replaced by the one-electron Dirac operator hj). 

The Dirac-Coulomb-Breit Hamiltonian H qb 1 rewritten in second-quantized form [6, 16] in terms of normal-ordered products of spinor creation and annihilation operators r+s and r+s+ut, ... 

By inserting the equations defining the kinetic energy operators and the pairwise interaction operators into Eq. (8) we obtain the Dirac-Coulomb-Breit Hamiltonian, which is in chemistry usually considered the fully relativistic reference Hamiltonian. 

If we refrain from such a restriction and consider a spin-operator-dependent Hamiltonian, such as the 4-component KS Hamiltonian or the Dirac-Coulomb Hamiltonian, the Hamiltonian does not commute with the square of the spin operator. The square of the spin operator and the Hamiltonian then do not share the same set of eigenfunctions, and hence spin is no longer a good quantum number. In this noncollinear framework we must therefore find a different solution and may define a spin density equal to the magnetization vector (32). 

Spin-orbit interaction Hamiltonians are most elegantly derived by reducing the relativistic four-component Dirac-Coulomb-Breit operator to two components and separating spin-independent and spin-dependent terms. This reduction can be achieved in many different ways for more details refer to the recent literature (e.g., Refs. 17-21). 

From the four-component Dirac-Coulomb-Breit equation, the terms [99]—[102] can be deduced without assuming external fields. A Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation23 of the electron-nuclear Coulomb attraction and collecting terms to order v1 /c1 yields the one-electron part [99], Similarly, the two-electron part [100] of the spin-same-orbit operator stems from the transformation of the two-electron Coulomb interaction. The spin-other-orbit terms [101] and [102] have a different origin. They result, among other terms, from the reduction of the Gaunt interaction. 

In this notation the presence of two upper and two lower components of the four-component Dirac spinor fa is emphasized. For solutions with positive energy and weak potentials, the latter is suppressed by a factor 1 /c2 with respect to the former, and therefore commonly dubbed the small component fa, as opposed to the large component fa. While a Hamiltonian for a many-electron system like an atom or a molecule requires an electron interaction term (in the simplest form we add the Coulomb interaction and obtain the Dirac-Coulomb-Breit Hamiltonian see Chapter 2), we focus here on the one-electron operator and discuss how it may be transformed to two components in order to integrate out the degrees of freedom of the charge-conjugated particle, which we do not want to consider explicitly. 

If a multiparticle system is considered and the election interaction is introduced, we may use the Dirac-Coulomb-Breit (DCB) Hamiltonian which is given by a sum of one-particle Dirac operators coupled by the Coulomb interaction 1 /r,7 and the Breit interaction Bij. Applying the Douglas-Kroll transformation to the DCB Hamiltonian, we arrive at the following operator (Hess 1997 Samzow and Hess 1991 Samzow et al. 1992), where an obvious shorthand notation for the indices pi has been used ... 

A crucial observation for the solution of the Dirac Coulomb problem is the following. For n = 0,1,2,..., define the operators... 

The explicit solvability of the relativistic Coulomb problem is related to the existence of an additional conserved quantity. A little calculation shows that the Dirac-Coulomb operator... 

A natural way to generalize the non-relativistic many-body Schrodinger equation is to combine the one-electron Dirac operators and Coulomb and Breit two-electron operators. However such an equation would have serious defects. One of them is the continuum dissolution first discussed by Brown and RavenhaU [36]. This means that the Schrodinger-type equation has no stable solutions due to the presence of the negative energy Dirac continuum. A constrained variational approach to the positive energy states becomes therefore necessary. 

The spectrum of the single-electron Dirac operator Hd and its eigenspinors (/> for Coulombic potentials are known in analytical form since the early days of relativistic quantum mechanics. However, this is no longer true for a many-electron system like an atom or a molecule being described by a many-particle Hamiltonian H, which is the sum of one-electron Dirac Hamiltonians of the above kind and suitably chosen interaction terms. One of the simplest choices for the electron interaction yields the Dirac-Coulomb-Breit (DCB) Hamiltonian, where only the frequency-independent first-order correction to the instantaneous Coulomb interaction is included. 

The Dirac-Coulomb and the Levy-Leblond-Coulomb operator... 

We introduce the change of the metric characteristic of DPT, and expand in powers of c. To 0(c ) we get the non-relativistic Hartree-Fock equations in Levy-Leblond form. The leading relativistic correction to the energy is then expressible in terms of nonrelativistic HF spin orbitals or rather the corresponding lower components xf - For the Dirac-Coulomb operator we get after some rearrangement [17, 18] ... 

The Fock operator f and the one-particle density matrix 7 commute, i.e. have common eigenfunctions. This allows an iterative construction of 7 from the eigenstates of f. The leading relativistic corrections for the Dirac-Coulomb operator are ... 

This expression can be rearranged [83] to (495). To this result, valid for the Dirac-Coulomb operator, the contribution of the Gaunt or Breit interaction has to be added ... 

We now come to E4. We consider only the Dirac-Coulomb operator. 

It was found [19], that the partial wave increments E of the leading relativistic correction E2 converge even more slowly, namely - for the Dirac-Coulomb operator - as... 

Shape-consistent pseudopotentials including spin-orbit operators based on Dirac-Hartree-Fock AE calculations using the Dirac-Coulomb Hamiltonian have been generated by Christiansen, Ermler and coworkers [161-170]. The potentials and corresponding valence basis sets are also available on the internet under http //www.clarkson.edu/ pac/reps.html. A similar, quite popular set for main group and transition elements based on scalar-relativistic Cowan-Griffin AE calculations was published by Hay and Wadt [171-175]. 

Since the Dirac equation is valid only for the one-electron system, the one-electron Dirac Hamiltonian has to be extended to the many-electron Hamiltonian in order to treat the chemically interesting many-electron systems. The straightforward way to construct the relativistic many-electron Hamiltonian is to augment the one-electron Dirac operator, Eq. (70) with the Coulomb or Breit (or its approximate Gaunt) operator as a two-electron term. This procedure yields the Dirac-Coulomb (DC) or Dirac-Coulomb-Breit (DCB) Hamiltonian derived from quantum electrodynamics (QED)... 

The expression for the lowest order contribution to the parity violating potential within the Dirac Hartree-Fock framework is identical to that within the relativistically parameterised extended Hiickel approach in eq. (146). The difference is, however, that in DHF typically atomic basis sets with fixed radial functions are employed (see [161]) and that the molecular orbital coefficients are obtained in a self-consistent Dirac Hartree-Fock procedure. Computations of parity violating potentials along these lines have occasionally been called fully relativistic, although this term is rather unfortunate. In the four-component Dirac Hartree-Fock calculations by Quiney, Skaane and Grant [155] as well as in those by Schwerdtfeger, Laerdahl and coworkers [65,156,162,163] the Dirac-Coulomb operator has been employed, which is for systems with n electrons given by... 

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