Spin Pairing—Restricted or Unrestricted

You will need to decide whether or not to request Restricted (RHF) or Unrestricted (UHF) Hartree-Fock calculations. This question embodies a certain amount of controversy and there is no simple answer. The answer often depends simply on which you prefer or what set of scientific prejudices you have. Ask yourself whether you prefer orbital energy diagrams with one or two electrons per orbital. 

To consider the question in more detail, you need to consider spin eigenfunctions. If you have a Hamiltonian X and a many-electron spin operator A, then the wave function T for the system is ideally an eigenfunction of both operators  

A UHF wave function may also be a necessary description when the effects of spin polarization are required. As discussed in Differences Between INDO and UNDO, a Restricted Hartree-Fock description will not properly describe a situation such as the methyl radical. The unpaired electron in this molecule occupies a p-orbital with a node in the plane of the molecule. When an RHF description is used (all the s orbitals have paired electrons), then no spin density exists anywhere in the s system. With a UHF description, however, the spin-up electron in the p-orbital interacts differently with spin-up and spin-down electrons in the s system and the s-orbitals become spatially separate for spin-up and spin-down electrons with resultant spin density in the s system. 

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