Self-consistent field calculations principles

In principle, this kind of scheme may be carried out for any molecule, with any number of electrons and any number of atomic orbitals y in the LCAO basis set. The practical calculation, however, involves the tedious evaluation of a large number of integrals, a number which increases so rapidly with the number of electrons that, for large molecules, complete self-consistent field calculations are not really feasible on a large scale. 

Cl calculations can be used to improve the quality of the wave-function and state energies. Self-consistent field (SCF) level calculations are based on the one-electron model, wherein each electron moves in the average field created by the other n-1 electrons in the molecule. Actually, electrons interact instantaneously and therefore have a natural tendency to avoid each other beyond the requirements of the Exclusion Principle. This correlation results in a lower average interelectronic repulsion and thus a lower state energy. The difference between electronic energies calculated at the SCF level versus the exact nonrelativistic energies is the correlation energy. 

There are two ways to improve the accuracy in order to obtain solutions to almost any degree of accuracy. The first is via the so-called self-consistent field-Hartree-Fock (SCF-HF) method, which is a method based on the variational principle that gives the optimal one-electron wave functions of the Slater determinant. Electron correlation is, however, still neglected (due to the assumed product of one-electron wave functions). In order to obtain highly accurate results, this approximation must also be eliminated.6 This is done via the so-called configuration interaction (Cl) method. The Cl method is again a variational calculation that involves several Slater determinants. 

The methodology that uses the dielectric model is instead the simpler and in principle the more suitable for the study of chemical reactions involving large molecular systems. In 1998, Amovilli et al [13] developed a computer code in which the solvent reaction field, including all the basic solute-solvent interactions, has been considered for Complete Active Space Self Consistent Field (CASSCF) calculations. 

Many of the principles and techniques for calculations on atoms, described in section 6.2 of this chapter, can be applied to molecules. In atoms the electronic wave function was written as a determinant of one-electron atomic orbitals which contain the electrons these atomic orbitals could be represented by a range of different analytical expressions. We showed how the Hartree-Fock self-consistent-field methods could be applied to calculate the single determinantal best energy, and how configuration interaction calculations of the mixing of different determinantal wave functions could be performed to calculate the correlation energy. We will now see that these technques can be applied to the calculation of molecular wave functions, the atomic orbitals of section 6.2 being replaced by one-electron molecular orbitals, constructed as linear combinations of atomic orbitals (l.c.a.o. method). 

Many ionization potentials have now been calculated for simple and complex molecules using more sophisticated self-consistent field treatments and, when the effect of electron correlation is considered, extremely good results may be obtained (e.g. Hush and Pople, 1954). Because ionization is rapid, the Franck-Condon principle applies in the calculation of ionization potentials, and the structure of the ion immediately after formation is essentially that of the molecule. On vibration, the geometry of the ion may change. 

The equation is used to describe the behaviour of an atom or molecule in terms of its wave-like (or quantum) nature. By trying to solve the equation the energy levels of the system are calculated. However, the complex nature of multielectron/nuclei systems is simplified using the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Unfortunately it is not possible to obtain an exact solution of the Schrddinger wave equation except for the simplest case, i.e. hydrogen. Theoretical chemists have therefore established approaches to find approximate solutions to the wave equation. One such approach uses the Hartree-Fock self-consistent field method, although other approaches are possible. Two important classes of calculation are based on ab initio or semi-empirical methods. Ah initio literally means from the beginning . The term is used in computational chemistry to describe computations which are not based upon any experimental data, but based purely on theoretical principles. This is not to say that this approach has no scientific basis - indeed the approach uses mathematical approximations to simplify, for example, a differential equation. In contrast, semi-empirical methods utilize some experimental data to simplify the calculations. As a consequence semi-empirical methods are more rapid than ab initio. 

Calculation of spectroscopic and magnetic properties of complexes with open d shells from first principles is still a rather rapidly developing field. In this review, we have outlined the basic principles for the calculations of these properties within the framework of the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) and the NEVPT2 serving as a basis for their implementation in ORCA. Furthermore, we provided a link between AI results and LFT using various parameterization schemes. More specifically, we used effective Hamiltonian theory describing a recipe allowing one to relate AI multiplet theory with LFT on a 1 1 matrix elements basis. 

The BERTHA package [50-54] builds on the principles and formalism described above. Its present core is a multi-centre DHFB self-consistent field code, with which the present chapter is concerned. The Fock matrix is constructed using direct methods that is to say molecular integrals are calculated as needed and are not retained in memory. The architecture of BERTHA aims at a transparent transcription of the mathematical formulae into simple and compact Fortran code. Modules for calculating molecular properties and for many-body calculations of correlation (2nd order MBPT) are available and more are planned, but these lie outside the scope of this chapter. Some of the calculations so far performed have been described in papers listed in the bibliography. 

There is, in principle, nothing which limits the self-consistent field method to any particular form of the exchange-correlation potential, and the procedure outlined above has been used in connection with several approximations for exchange and correlation. Most notable in this respect is SLATER S Xa method [1.4] which has been applied to all atoms in the periodic table, to some molecules, and in the majority of the existing electronic-structure calculations for crystalline solids. 

In advanced Slater theory, more than one Slater function is taken in a linear combination to generate the best approximation to particular atomic orbitals and we have seen that this best standard could be based on the degree of fit to the numerical radial functions or the linear combinations that returned the variation principle best eigenvalue. In such cases, these coefficients are undetermined until the best eigenvalues have been calculated and the overall requirement of normalization is imposed. This is a general problem, which leads us to the theory of the self-consistent field (57,58,61,62, 42,47,53) developed by Hartree in his early calculations (1) and to Chapter 5. 

The Englishman, Hartree (1,60) the Russian, Fock (2,3) and the American, Slater (5-7), in the early development of modern quantum mechanics, pioneered the calculation of atomic electronic structure. Hartree based his method on the variation principle and this led naturally to the development of the self-consistent field method, which is at the heart of the design of modem molecular orbital programs. 

Koopmans Theorem. In contrast to many other spectroscopic methods, interpretation of photoelectron spectra requires the support of calculations. According the equation 3 it is in principle necessary to calculate the total energy of both the ground state and the various cationic states of a molecule. In most cases—for exceptions, see Section III—it is sufficient to calculate the electronic structure of the ground state of the molecule within the self-consistent-field (SCF) method. 

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