Restricted Versus Unrestricted Wavefunctions

The preceding development of the HF theory assumed a closed-shell wavefunction. The wavefunction for an individual electron describes its spatial extent along with its spin. The electron can be either spin up (a) or spin down (P). For the closed-shell wavefunction, each pair of electrons shares the same spatial orbital but each has a different spin—one is up and the other is down. This type of wavefunction is also called a (spin)-restricted wavefunction since the paired electrons are restricted to the same spatial orbital, leading to the restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF) method. 

This restriction is not demanded. It is a simple way to satisfy the Pauli exclusion principle, but it is not the only means for doing so. In an unrestricted wavefunction, the spin-up electron and its spin-down partner do not have the same spatial description. The Hartree-Fock-Roothaan procedure is slightly modified to handle this case by creating a set of equations for the a electrons and another set for the p electrons, and then an algorithm similar to that described above is implemented. 

The downside to the (spin)-unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) method is that the unrestricted wavefunction usually will not be an eigenfunction of the operator. Since the Hamiltonian and operators commnte, the true wavefunction must be an eigenfunction of both of these operators. The UHF wavefunction is typically contaminated with higher spin states for singlet states, the most important contaminant is the triplet state. A procedure called spin projection can be used to remove much of this contamination. However, geometry optimization is difficult to perform with spin projection. Therefore, great care is needed when an unrestricted wavefunction is utilized, as it must be when the molecule of interest is inherently open shell, like in radicals. 

---

Perturbative approximation methods are usually based on the Mpller-Plesset (MP) perturbation theory for correcting the HF wavefunction. Energetic corrections may be calculated to second (MP2), third (MP3), or higher order. As usual, the open- versus closed-shell character of the wavefunction can be specified by an appropriate prefix, such as ROMP2 or UMP2 for restricted open-shell or unrestricted MP2, respectively. 

---