State, electronic correlation

The direct knockout mechanism had earlier been evoked by Samson [36, 37], who pointed out that the variation of some double photoionization cross sections as a function of energy closely resembles the form of electron impact ionization cross sections of ions. This is, of course, the expected behavior if direct knockout dominates, which is expected in the energy range relatively near threshold. Further consideration of these model mechanisms is left for a later section where the role of initial state electron correlation is discussed. 

It is advantageous if the laser system pemiits rotation of the optical polarization. Detached electrons correlated witii different final electronic states of the neutral molecule will generally be emitted with different angular distributions about the direction of polarization. Measurement of the angular distribution helps in the interpretation of complex photoelectron spectra. The angular distribution/(0) of photoelectrons is [50]... 

Calculated transition structures may be very sensitive Lo the level of theory employed. Semi-empirical methods, since they are parametrized for energy miriimnm structures, may be less appropriate for transition state searching than ab initio methods are. Transition structures are norm ally characterized by weak partial" bonds, that is, being broken or formed. In these cases UHF calculations arc necessary, and sometimes even the inclusion of electron correlation effects. 

There are two types of electron correlations static and dynamic. Static correlation refers to a near degeneracy of a given state a dynamic correlation refers to the in stantaneous avoidance of electrons with each other. 

Xlie correction due to electron correlation would be expected to be greater for the unionised state than for the ionised state, as the former has more electrons. Fortunately, therefore, the t-tfect of electron correlation often opposes the effect of the frozen orbitals, resulting in many cases in good agreement between experimentally determined ionisation potentials and caU Lila ted values. 

A more useful quantity for comparison with experiment is the heat of formation, which is defined as the enthalpy change when one mole of a compound is formed from its constituent elements in their standard states. The heat of formation can thus be calculated by subtracting the heats of atomisation of the elements and the atomic ionisation energies from the total energy. Unfortunately, ab initio calculations that do not include electron correlation (which we will discuss in Chapter 3) provide uniformly poor estimates of heats of formation w ith errors in bond dissociation energies of 25-40 kcal/mol, even at the Hartree-Fock limit for diatomic molecules. 

Configuration Interaction (or electron correlation) adds to the single determinant of the Hartree-Fock wave function a linear combination of determinants that play the role of atomic orbitals. This is similar to constructing a molecular orbital as a linear combination of atomic orbitals. Like the LCAO approximation. Cl calculations determine the weighting of each determinant to produce the lowest energy ground state (see SCFTechnique on page 43). 

Hartree-Fock theory is very useful for providing initial, first-level predictions for many systems. It is also reasonably good at computing the structures and vibrational frequencies of stable molecules and some transition states. As such, it is a good base-level theory. However, its neglect of electron correlation makes it unsuitable for some purposes. For example, it is insufficient for accurate modeling of the energetics of reactions and bond dissociation. 

The remarkable thing is that the HF model is so reliable for the calculation of very many molecular properties, as 1 will discuss in Chapters 16 and 17. But for many simple applications, a more advanced treatment of electron correlation is essential and in any case there are very many examples of spectroscopic states that caimot be represented as a single Slater determinant (and so cannot be treated using the standard HF model). In addition, the HF model can only treat the lowest-energy state of any given symmetry. 

MNDOC has the same functional form as MNDO, however, electron correlation is explicitly calculated by second-order perturbation theory. The derivation of the MNDOC parameters is done by fitting the correlated MNDOC results to experimental data. Electron correlation in MNDO is only included implicitly via the parameters, from fitting to experimental results. Since the training set only includes ground-state stable molecules, MNDO has problems treating systems where the importance of electron comelation is substantially different from normal molecules. MNDOC consequently performs significantly better for systems where this is not the case, such as transition structures and excited states. 

The parameterization of MNDO/AM1/PM3 is performed by adjusting the constants involved in the different methods so that the results of HF calculations fit experimental data as closely as possible. This is in a sense wrong. We know that the HF method cannot give the correct result, even in the limit of an infinite basis set and without approximations. The HF results lack electron correlation, as will be discussed in Chapter 4, but the experimental data of course include such effects. This may be viewed as an advantage, the electron correlation effects are implicitly taken into account in the parameterization, and we need not perform complicated calculations to improve deficiencies in fhe HF procedure. However, it becomes problematic when the HF wave function cannot describe the system even qualitatively correctly, as for example with biradicals and excited states. Additional flexibility can be introduced in the trial wave function by adding more Slater determinants, for example by means of a Cl procedure (see Chapter 4 for details). But electron cori elation is then taken into account twice, once in the parameterization at the HF level, and once explicitly by the Cl calculation. 

By including electron correlation in the wave function the UHF method introduces more biradical character into the wave function than RHF. The spin contamination part is also purely biradical in nature, i.e. a UHF treatment in general will overestimate the biradical character. Most singlet states are well described by a closed-shell wave function near the equilibrium geometry, and in those cases it is not possible to generate a UHF solution which has a lower energy than the RHF. There are systems, however, for which this does not hold. An example is the ozone molecule, where two types of resonance structure can be drawn. Figure 4.8. 

Usually, geometries of transition states are significantly more sensitive with respect to method than are stmctures of stable species. Since electron correlation effects are of particular importance for these stmctures, the determination of transition states at the Hartree-Fock level should be avoided. It is recommended to compare the stmctural parameters of transition states obtained from different methods (for instance DFT and MP2) in order not to be misled. 

---