Variation method excited state energies

There is a variation on the coupled cluster method known as the symmetry adapted cluster (SAC) method. This is also a size consistent method. For excited states, a Cl out of this space, called a SAC-CI, is done. This improves the accuracy of electronic excited-state energies. 

The Ritz procedure is a special case of the variational method, in which the parameters c enter linearly 4>(x c) = c l, where I, - are some known basis functions that form (or more exactly, in principle form) the complete set of functions in the Hilhert space. This formalism leads to a set of homogeneous linear equations to solve (secular equations), from which we find approximations to the ground- and excited-state energies and wave functions. 

A detailed diseussion of these and other variants was given in (Ref.35). Attention must be called to the fact that these methods are not variational which causes the energies obtained with them to be lower than those obtained with the FCI method. The counterpart to this deffect is that excited states, open-shell systems, and radicals, can be calculated with as much ease as the ground state and closed-shell systems. Also, the size of the calculation is determined solely by the size of the Hilbert subspace chosen and does not depend in principle on the number of electrons since all happens as if only two electrons were considered. 

The variation method is usually employed to determine an approximate value of the lowest eneigy state (the ground state) of a given atomic or molecular system. It can, furthermore, be extended to the calculation of energy levels of excited stales. It forms the basis of molecular orbital theory and that which is often referred to (incorrectly) as theoretical chemistry". 

In ab initio methods (which, by definiton, should not contain empirical parameters), the dynamic correlation energy must be recovered by a true extension of the (single configuration or small Cl) model. This can be done by using a very large basis of configurations, but there are more economical methods based on many-body perturbation theory which allow one to circumvent the expensive (and often impracticable) large variational Cl calculation. Due to their importance in calculations of polyene radical ion excited states, these will be briefly described in Section 4. 

---