Spin-orbit coupling electronic Hamiltonian

When spin-orbit couplings are added to the electrostatic Hamiltonian considered in the text, additional terms arise in H. These terms have the form of a one-electron additive operator ... 

Let us return to the nonadiabatic chemical processes. When a PES has been built, a part of the total Hamiltonian may remain unaccounted for, and this part, acting as a perturbation, induces transitions from the initial to the final state. There are several types of such a perturbation, namely (i) an unaccounted part of the electronic interaction (ii) non-adiabaticity (iii) spin-orbit coupling. 

The complete Hamiltonian of the molecular system can be wrihen as H +H or H =H +H for the commutator being linear, where is the Hamiltonian corresponding to the spin contribution(s) such as, Fermi contact term, dipolar term, spin-orbit coupling, etc. (5). As a result, H ° would correspond to the spin free part of the Hamiltonian, which is usually employed in the electron propagator implementation. Accordingly, the k -th pole associated with the complete Hamiltonian H is , so that El is the A -th pole of the electron propagator for the spin free Hamiltonian H . 

However, there also exists a third possibility. By using a famous relation due to Dirac, the relativistic effects can be (in a nonunique way) divided into spin-independent and spin-dependent terms. The former are collectively called scalar relativistic effects and the latter are subsumed under the name spin-orbit coupling (SOC). The scalar relativistic effects can be straightforwardly included in the one-electron Hamiltonian operator h. Unless the investigated elements are very heavy, this recovers the major part of the distortion of the orbitals due to relativity. The SOC terms may be treated in a second step by perturbation theory. This is the preferred way of approaching molecular properties and only breaks down in the presence of very heavy elements or near degeneracy of the investigated electronic state. 

We now will show that spin-orbit coupling can give a spin Hamiltonian term identical to that we obtained from the electron dipolar interaction. Consider the... 

Magnetic Hamiltonians are defined for a desired group of N electronic states obtained in the ab initio calculation, to which a pseudospin S (it reduces to a true spin S in the absence of spin-orbit coupling) is subscribed according to the relation N = 2S + 1. For instance, the two wave functions of a I[Pg.161]

II electronic states, 638-640 vibronic coupling, 628-631 triatomic molecules, 594-598 Hamiltonian equations, 612-615 pragmatic models, 620-621 Kramers doublets, geometric phase theory linear Jahn-Teller effect, 20-22 spin-orbit coupling, 20-22 Kramers-Kronig reciprocity, wave function analycity, 201 -205 Kramers theorem ... 

Two distinct sources contribute to the spin Hamiltonian of the form of (6), spin-orbit coupling and spin-spin interaction. The latter, magnetic dipole-dipole interaction between the unpaired electrons, is dominant in organic molecules that do not contain heavy elements. 

The main effect of taking spin-orbit interaction into account will be an admixture of singlet character to triplet states and triplet character to singlet states. The spin-orbit coupling Hamiltonian can to a good approximation be described by an effective one-electron operator Hso ... 

In general, fluctuations in any electron Hamiltonian terms, due to Brownian motions, can induce relaxation. Fluctuations of anisotropic g, ZFS, or anisotropic A tensors may provide relaxation mechanisms. The g tensor is in fact introduced to describe the interaction energy between the magnetic field and the electron spin, in the presence of spin orbit coupling, which also causes static ZFS in S > 1/2 systems. The A tensor describes the hyperfine coupling of the unpaired electron(s) with the metal nuclear-spin. Stochastic fluctuations can arise from molecular reorientation (with correlation time Tji) and/or from molecular distortions, e.g., due to collisions (with correlation time t ) (18), the latter mechanism being usually dominant. The electron relaxation time is obtained (15) as a function of the squared anisotropies of the tensors and of the correlation time, with a field dependence due to the term x /(l + x ). 

The symbol V(q,Q) stands for a kinematic operator containing spin-orbit terms, electron-phonon couplings and, eventually, a coupling to external fields. The molecular Hamiltonian is given by ... 

The direct dipole-dipole interaction between electron spins given in Eq. (14) can also contribute to D and E in the spin Hamiltonian. Various estimates of its contribution have shown it to be much smaller than the spin-orbit terms for transition-metal ions. For systems in which the crystal field is greatly distorted, this term can become large, however, and it is found to be the major source of D in the spin Hamiltonian of organic triplet-state molecules, where the spin-orbit terms are small as a result of the small size of the spin-orbit coupling parameter. 

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