Spin-unrestricted Hartree-Fock orbitals

Molecular orbitals from linear combination of atom orbitals Spin-restricted Hartree-Fock. Wave function constructed from antisymmetrized product of doubly occupied spin orbitals (UHF, spin-unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations are used for excited states and radicals)... 

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). 

Because the convenience of the one-electron formalism is retained, DFT methods can easily take into account the scalar relativistic effects and spin-orbit effects, via either perturbation or variational methods. The retention of the one-electron picture provides a convenient means of analyzing the effects of relativity on specific orbitals of a molecule. Spin-unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) calculations usually suffer from spin contamination, particularly in systems that have low-lying excited states (such as metal-containing systems). By contrast, in spin-unrestricted Kohn-Sham (UKS) DFT calculations the spin-contamination problem is generally less significant for many open-shell systems (39). For example, for transition metal methyl complexes, the deviation of the calculated UKS expectation values S (S = spin angular momentum operator) from the contamination-free theoretical values are all less than 5% (32). 

The SCF orbitals of open-shell systems may be obtained by the (spin) unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) open-shell approach of Pople and Nes-bet (1954). In this method, the orbitals associated with an a spin function are different from those associated with a j8 spin function. So, for a doublet ground state In + 1 electrons), the wave function is written as ... 

The Roothaan-Hall equations are not applicable to open-shell systems, which contain one or more unpaired electrons. Radicals are, by definition, open-shell systems as are some ground-state molecules such as NO and 02. Two approaches have been devised to treat open-shell systems. The first of these is spin-restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF) theory, which uses combinations of singly and doubly occupied molecular orbitals. The closed-shell approach that we have developed thus far is a special case of RHF theory. The doubly occupied orbitals use the same spatial functions for electrons of both a and spin. The orbital expansion Equation (2.144) is employed together with the variational method to derive the optimal values of the coefficients. The alternative approach is the spin-unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) theory of Pople and Nesbet [Pople and Nesbet 1954], which uses two distinct sets of molecular orbitals one for electrons of a spin and the other for electrons of / spin. Two Fock matrices are involved, one for each type of spin, with elements as follows ... 

The wavefunction W(X,b) will be given as a single Slater determinant made from spin-unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) molecular orbital functions which are eigenfunctions of the perturbed Fock matrices... 

There is a possibility for more than one solution of the Hartree-Fock equations if different electronic states come close on a potential energy surface. Within the spin-restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF) method, singlet and triplet instabilities are distinguished, The former involves the existence of another solution with lower energy and an electron distribution of lower symmetry, normally indicating that the initially assumed geometry is incorrect. Triplet instability involves rejection of the condition of double occupancy of molecular orbitals and a spin-unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) method treatment is mandatory. The triplet instability is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for a biradical character of a ground state. 

A more general way to treat systems having an odd number of electrons, and certain electronically excited states of other systems, is to let the individual HF orbitals become singly occupied, as in Figure 6.3. In standard HF theory, we constrain the wavefunction so that every HF orbital is doubly occupied. The idea of unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) theory is to allow the a and yS electrons to have different spatial wavefunctions. In the LCAO variant of UHF theory, we seek LCAO coefficients for the a spin and yS spin orbitals separately. These are determined from coupled matrix eigenvalue problems that are very similar to the closed-shell case. 

Here, occ means occupied and virt means virtual. In the restricted Hartree-Fock model, each orbital can be occupied by at most one a spin and one (i spin electron. That is the meaning of the (redundant) Alpha in the output. In the unrestricted Hartree-Fock model, the a spin electrons have a different spatial part to the spin electrons and the output consists of the HF-LCAO coefficients for both the a spin and the spin electrons. 

So far there have not been any restrictions on the MOs used to build the determinantal trial wave function. The Slater determinant has been written in terms of spinorbitals, eq. (3.20), being products of a spatial orbital times a spin function (a or /3). If there are no restrictions on the form of the spatial orbitals, the trial function is an Unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) wave function. The term Different Orbitals for Different Spins (DODS) is also sometimes used. If the interest is in systems with an even number of electrons and a singlet type of wave function (a closed shell system), the restriction that each spatial orbital should have two electrons, one with a and one with /3 spin, is normally made. Such wave functions are known as Restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF). Open-shell systems may also be described by restricted type wave functions, where the spatial part of the doubly occupied orbitals is forced to be the same this is known as Restricted Open-shell Hartree-Fock (ROHF). For open-shell species a UHF treatment leads to well-defined orbital energies, which may be interpreted as ionization potentials. Section 3.4. For an ROHF wave function it is not possible to chose a unitary transformation which makes the matrix of Lagrange multipliers in eq. (3.40) diagonal, and orbital energies from an ROHF wave function are consequently not uniquely defined, and cannot be equated to ionization potentials by a Koopman type argument. 

This means that one has to be extremely careful in making physical interpretations of the results of the unrestricted Hartree-Fock scheme, even if one has selected the pure spin component desired. In many cases, it is probably safer to carry out an additional variation of the orbitals for the specific spin component under consideration, i.e., to go over to the extended Hartree-Fock scheme. In the unrestricted scheme, one has obtained mathematical simplicity at the price of some physical confusion—in the extended scheme, the physical simplicity is restored, but the corresponding Hartree-Fock equations are now more complicated to solve. We probably have to accept these mathematical complications, since it is ultimately the physics of the system we are interested in. 

In the unrestricted Hartree-Fock method, a single-determinant wave function is used with different molecular orbitals for a and jS spins, and the eigenvalue problem is solved with separate F and F matrices. With the zero differential overlap approximation, the F matrix elements (25) become... 

The wave funetion obtained eorresponds to the Unrestricted Hartree-Fock scheme and beeomes equivalent to the RHF ease if the orbitals (t>a and (()p are the same. In this UHF form, the UHF wave funetion obeys the Pauli prineiple but is not an eigenfunction of the total spin operator and is thus a mixture of different spin multiplicities. In the present two-eleetron case, an alternative form of the wave funetion which has the same total energy, which is a pure singlet state, but whieh is no longer antisymmetric as required by thePauli principle, is ... 

Just as in the unrestricted Hartree-Fock variant, the Slater determinant constructed from the KS orbitals originating from a spin unrestricted exchange-correlation functional is not a spin eigenfunction. Frequently, the resulting (S2) expectation value is used as a probe for the quality of the UKS scheme, similar to what is usually done within UHF. However, we must be careful not to overstress the apparent parallelism between unrestricted Kohn-Sham and Hartree-Fock in the latter, the Slater determinant is in fact the approximate wave function used. The stronger its spin contamination, the more questionable it certainly gets. In... 

In the former, electrons are assigned to orbitals in pairs, the total spin is zero, so the multiplicity is 1. In this case, the restricted Hartree-Fock method (RHF) can be applied. For radicals with doublet or triplet states, the unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) has to be applied. In this method, a and, 3 electrons (spin up and spin down) are assigned to different spatial orbitals, so there are two distinct sets I and FJf... 

As with the unrestricted Hartree-Fock approximation, the LSDA allows for different orbitals for different spin orientations. The LSDA gives a simplified treatment of exchange but also includes Coulomb correlations. 

Much of the development of the previous chapter pertains to the use of a single Slater determinant trial wavefunction. As presented, it relates to what has been called the unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) theory in which each spin-orbital (ftj has its own orbital energy 8i and LCAO-MO coefficients Cv,i there may be different Cv,i for a spin-orbitals than for (3 spin-orbitals. Such a wavefunction suffers from the spin contamination difficulty detailed earlier. 

We shall now follow the unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) formalism to obtain a restricted high-spin open-shell functions as proposed in [34], [35]. In order to eliminate spin contamination in the UHF function f i, the following spin purity constraint is imposed on the spatial orbitals ... 

The version of HF theory we have been studying is called unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) theory. It is appropriate to all molecules, regardless of the number of electrons and the distribution of electron spins (which specify the electronic state of the molecule). The spin must be taken into account when the exchange integrals are being evaluated since if the two spin orbitals involved in this integral did not have the same spin function, a or ft, the integral value is zero by virtue of the orthonormality of the electron spin functions... 

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