Pseudo-Valence Orbital Transformation

Reductions in the basis set used to represent the valence orbital can be only achieved if by admixture of core orbitals radial nodes are eliminated and the shape of the resulting pseudo ip) valence orbital core region (pseudo-valence orbital transformation)... 

It may be asked how accurate energy-consistent pseudopotentials will reproduce the shape of the valence orbitals/spinors and their energies. Often radial expectation values < r > are used as a convenient measure for the radial shape of orbitals/spinors. Due to the pseudo-valence orbital transformation and the simplified nodal structure it is clear that values n < 0 are not suitable, since the resulting operator samples the orbitals mainly in the core region. Table 2 lists orbital energies, < r > and < > expectation values for the Db [Rn] 5f 6d ... 

Extensive introductions to the effective core potential method may be found in Ref. [8-19]. The theoretical foundation of ECP is the so-called Phillips-Kleinman transformation proposed in 1959 [20] and later generalized by Weeks and Rice [21]. In this method, for each valence orbital (pv there is a pseudo-valence orbital Xv that contains components from the core orbitals and the strong orthogonality constraint is realized by applying the projection operator on both the valence hamiltonian and pseudo-valence wave function (pseudo-valence orbitals). In the generalized Phillips-Kleinman formalism [21], the effect of the projection operator can be absorbed in the valence Pock operator and the core-valence interaction (Coulomb and exchange) plus the effect of the projection operator forms the core potential in ECP method. 

A further reduction of the computational effort in investigations of electronic structure can be achieved by the restriction of the actual quantum chemical calculations to the valence electron system and the implicit inclusion of the influence of the chemically inert atomic cores by means of suitable parametrized effective (core) potentials (ECPs) and, if necessary, effective core polarization potentials (CPPs). Initiated by the pioneering work of Hellmann and Gombas around 1935, the ECP approach developed into two successful branches, i.e. the model potential (MP) and the pseudopotential (PP) techniques. Whereas the former method attempts to maintain the correct radial nodal structure of the atomic valence orbitals, the latter is formally based on the so-called pseudo-orbital transformation and uses valence orbitals with a simplified radial nodal structure, i.e. pseudovalence orbitals. Besides the computational savings due to the elimination of the core electrons, the main interest in standard ECP techniques results from the fact that they offer an efficient and accurate, albeit approximate, way of including implicitly, i.e. via parametrization of the ECPs, the major relativistic effects in formally nonrelativistic valence-only calculations. A number of reviews on ECPs has been published and the reader is referred to them for details (Bala-subramanian 1998 Bardsley 1974 Chelikowsky and Cohen 1992 Christiansen et... 

The analytical forms of the modern PPs used today have little in common with the formulas we obtain by a strict derivation of the theory (Dolg 2000). Formally, the pseudo-orbital transformation leads to nodeless pseudovalence orbitals for the lowest atomic valence orbitals of a given angular quantum number l (one-component) or Ij (two-component). The simplest and historically the first choice is the local ansatz for A VCy in Equation (3.4). However, this ansatz turned out to be too inaccurate and therefore was soon replaced by a so-called semilocal form, which in two-component form may be written as... 

Similarly as in Section 1.2, one starts from atomic AE reference calculations at the independent-particle level (some kind of quasi-relativistic HF or fully relativistic DHF). The first step now in setting up pseudopotentials consists in a smoothing procedure for valence orbitals/spinors ( pseudo-orbital transformation ). In the DHF case, to be specific, the radial part ( )/ of the large component of the energetically lowest valence spinors for each //-combination is transformed according to... 

Such a feature of equivalent pseudo-orbitals in establishing the localization of the valence orbital and eigen-value consecrates the reality of the valence reality, on the one hand, and corresponds to those involving localization measures through imitary orthogonal transformations, described before, on the other hand. 

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