Spin-orbit operators calculations

Since the angular momentum operator and the spatial part of a spin-orbit operator have the same symmetry, from a computational point of view the process of calculation of CjS0,1 or Cj 2 is almost identical to that of obtaining Aj or Bj, respectively. 

It appears, therefore, that it is possible to obtain accurate expectation values of the spin-orbit operators for diatomic molecules. Matcha et a/.112-115 have provided general expressions for the integrals involved and from their work Hall, Walker, and Richards116 derived the diagonal one-centre matrix elements of the spin-other-orbit operator for linear molecules. Provided good Hartree-Fock wavefunctions are available, these should be sufficient for most calculations involving diatomic molecules. 

Another method, devised by Cohen et al. to determine oxygen-rate gas collision parameters is to define an effective spin-orbit operator that includes r dependence, Zeff/r3, where the value of Zeff is adjusted to match experimental data (76). Langhoff has compared this technique with all-electron calculations using the full microscopic spin-orbit Hamiltonian for the rare-gas-oxide potential curves and found very good agreement (77). This operator has also been employed in REP calculations on Si (73), UF6 (78), U02+ and Th02 (79), and UF5 (80). The REPs employed in these calculations are based on Cowen-Griffin atomic orbitals, which include the relativistic mass-velocity and Darwin effects but do not include spin-orbit effects. Wadt (73), has made comparisons with calculations on Si by Stevens and Krauss (81), who employed the ab initio REP-based spin-orbit operator of Ermler et al. (35). 

Fig. 6. Average relativistic effective core potential and relativistic effective core potential energy curves for two states of Bi2. HF, Hartree-Fock GVB(pp), eight-configuration perfect-pairing generalized valence bond FVCI, full-valence Cl based on the GVB(pp) wave functions FV7R, full-valence Cl plus single and double promotions to virtual MOs relative to seven-dominant configurations. (The FVCI and FV7R calculations include the REP-based spin-orbit operator.)...

An accurate procedure for performing calculations that incorporate spin-orbit and other relativistic effects, and that represents intermediate coupling states for molecules containing heavy atoms, is based on A-S coupling in conjunction with the use of the ab initio REP-based spin-orbit operator and extended configuration interaction. The coupling scheme is more familiar than co-co coupling to chemists and physicists. In addition, the complexity of calculations necessary to achieve reliable results is computationally tractable. 

Semiempirical spin-orbit operators play an important role in all-electron and in REP calculations based on Co wen- Griffin pseudoorbitals. These operators are based on rather severe approximations, but have been shown to give good results in many cases. An alternative is to employ the complete microscopic Breit-Pauli spin-orbit operator, which adds considerably to the complexity of the problem because of the necessity to include two-electron terms. However, it is also inappropriate in heavy-element molecules unless used in the presence of mass-velocity and Darwin terms. 

Computation of the spin-orbit contribution to the electronic g-tensor shift can in principle be carried out using linear density functional response theory, however, one needs to introduce an efficient approximation of the two-electron spin-orbit operator, which formally can not be described in density functional theory. One way to solve this problem is to introduce the atomic mean-field (AMEI) approximation of the spin-orbit operator, which is well known for its accurate description of the spin-orbit interaction in molecules containing heavy atoms. Another two-electron operator appears in the first order diamagnetic two-electron contribution to the g-tensor shift, but in most molecules the contribution of this operator is negligible and can be safely omitted from actual calculations. These approximations have effectively resolved the DET dilemma of dealing with two-electron operators and have so allowed to take a practical approach to evaluate electronic g-tensors in DET. Conventionally, DET calculations of this kind are based on the unrestricted... 

Thus this model maps density over atoms rather than spatial coordinates. If overlap is included some other definition of charge density such as Mulliken s17 may be employed. Eq. (30) and (31) are then used with this wave function to calculate the hyperfine constants as a function of the pn s. If symmetry is high enough, there will be enough hyperfine constants to determine all the p s, otherwise additional approximations may be necessary. For transition metal complexes, where spin-orbit effects are appreciable, it is necessary to include admixtures of excited-state configurations that are mixed with the ground state by the spin-orbit operator. To determine the extent of admixture, we must know the value of the spin-orbit constant X and the energy of the excited states. 

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]. 

The Breit-Pauli (BP) approximation [140] is obtained truncating the Taylor expansion of the Foldy-Wouthuysen (FW) transformed Dirac Hamiltonian [141] up to the (p/mc) term. The BP equation has the well-known mass-velocity, Darwin, and spin-orbit operators. Although the BP equation gives reasonable results in the first-order perturbation calculation, it cannot be used in the variational treatment. 

True relativistic ab initio calculations have been done for hydride molecules such as T1H (Pyykko and Desclaux, 1976) and have been extended to heavy nonhydride molecules, such as I2 (de Jong, et ai, 1997). Other types of calculations involve treating the spin-orbit operator as a perturbation and adding its effects to the nonrelativistic potential curves (for example, Ne2, Cohen and Schneider, 1974 LiHg, Gleichmann and Hess, 1994). 

The introductory part of this chapter, which provides a survey of Hamiltonian operators and wave function and energy evaluation methods that are cmrently in use for the calculation of spin-orbit coupling, is fairly general. In particular, we attempt to incorporate the spin-dipole spin-dipole interaction operator as an equal partner, whose appreciation is necessary for spin-orbit coupling calculations on organic molecules. 

The Amsterdam Density Functional (ADF) method [118,119] was used for calculations of some transactinide compounds. In a modem version of the method, the Hamiltonian contains relativistic corrections already in the zeroth order and is called the zero-order regular approximation (ZORA) [120]. Recently, the spin-orbit operator was included in the ZORA Fock operator [121]. The ZORA method uses analytical basis fimctions, and gives reliable geometries and bonding descriptions. For elements with a very large SO splitting, like 114, ZORA can deviate from the 4-component DFT results due to an improper description of the pi/2 spinors [117]. Another one-component quasirelativistic scheme [122] applied to the calculations of dimers of elements 111 and 114[116,117]isa modification of the ZORA method. 

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