Spin-restricted reference determinants

Several researchers have recently devoted considerable effort to the derivation and efficient implementation of techniques based on spin-restricted reference determinants that reduce the computational discrepancy between closed- and open-shell systems. " This emphasis on spin-restricted techniques has resulted in part from a bias toward reference wavefunctions that maintain the spin symmetry of the exact wavefunction (such as the ROHF determinant), but also because of the possible efficiency advantages of spin-restricted methods over unrestricted techniques. Thus, since the component molecular orbitals are constrained to have identical spatial parts for each spin function, it should be possible to construct the correlated wavefunction in a manner that takes advantage of this symmetry. 

To distinguish between closed-shell and open-shell configurations (and determinants), one may generally include a prefix to specify whether the starting HF wavefunction is of restricted closed-shell (R), restricted open-shell (RO), or unrestricted (U) form. (The restricted forms are total S2 spin eigenfunctions, but the unrestricted form need not be.) Thus, the abbreviations RHF, ROHF, and UHF refer to the spin-restricted closed-shell, spin-restricted open-shell, and unrestricted HF methods, respectively. 

The choice of as the zeroth-order Hamiltonian requires the use of either a spin-restricted (closed-shell) Hartree-Fock (RHF) or spin-unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) determinant as the zeroth-order (reference) wavefunction. Since spin-restricted open-shell Hartree-Fock (ROHF) reference functions are not eigenfunctions of the spin-orbital P, other partitionings are required (Refs. 127-134). 

The ESR hyperfine coupling is determined by triplet perturbations. Thus, in principle one should use an unrestricted wave function to describe the reference state. However, it is also possible to use a spin-restricted wave function (Fernandez et al. 1992) and take into account the triplet nature of the perturbation in the definition of the response. Within such a (e.g., SCF or MCSCF) restricted-unrestricted approach, first-order properties are given as the sum of the usual expectation value term and a response correction that takes into account the change of the wave function induced by the perturbation (of the type (0 H° 0)). This restricted-unrestricted approach has also been extended to restricted Kohn-Sham density functional theory (Rinkevicius et al. 2004). 

Let us summarize the spin-restricted coupled-cluster ansatz for high-spin open-shell systems [34]. The reference wave function is an RHF state and the projection manifold consists of determinants of the same spin projection as the reference state - for example, all states obtained from the reference state by single and double spin-orbital replacements. The spin-restricted coupled-cluster energy is calculated in the usual manner... 

M. Urban, P. Neogrady, and I. Hubac, Spin Adaptation in the Open-Shell Coupled-Cluster Theory with a Single Determinant Restricted Hartree-Fock Reference. In R. J. Bartlett (Ed.) Recent Advances in Coupled-Cluster Methods. Recent Advances in Computational Chemistry, Vol. 3. (World Scientific, Singapore, 1997), pp. 275-306. 

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