Wave functions, approximate determinant-type

In practice, each CSF is a Slater determinant of molecular orbitals, which are divided into three types inactive (doubly occupied), virtual (unoccupied), and active (variable occupancy). The active orbitals are used to build up the various CSFs, and so introduce flexibility into the wave function by including configurations that can describe different situations. Approximate electronic-state wave functions are then provided by the eigenfunctions of the electronic Flamiltonian in the CSF basis. This contrasts to standard FIF theory in which only a single determinant is used, without active orbitals. The use of CSFs, gives the MCSCF wave function a structure that can be interpreted using chemical pictures of electronic configurations [229]. An interpretation in terms of valence bond sti uctures has also been developed, which is very useful for description of a chemical process (see the appendix in [230] and references cited therein). 

Approximating a many-electron wave function by a finite sum of Slater determinants, e.g. truncating the Cl, CC or MBPT wave function to include only certain excitation types. 

To understand how Kohn and Sham tackled this problem, we go back to the discussion of the Hartree-Fock scheme in Chapter 1. There, our wave function was a single Slater determinant SD constructed from N spin orbitals. While the Slater determinant enters the HF method as the approximation to the true N-electron wave function, we showed in Section 1.3 that 4>sd can also be looked upon as the exact wave function of a fictitious system of N non-interacting electrons (that is electrons which behave as uncharged fermions and therefore do not interact with each other via Coulomb repulsion), moving in the elfective potential VHF. For this type of wave function the kinetic energy can be exactly expressed as... 

Although the equations look very different, the calculated values for the percent ionic character are approximately equal for many types of bonds. If the difference in electronegativity is 1.0, Eq. (3.70) predicts 19.5% ionic character while Eq. (3.71) gives a value of 18%. This difference is insignificant for most purposes. After one of these equations is used to estimate the percent ionic character, Eq. (3.61) can be used to determine the coefficient A in the molecular wave function. Figure 3.10 shows how percent ionic character varies with the difference in electronegativity. 

The simplest approximation corresponds to a single-determinant wave function. The best possible approximation of this type is the Hartree-Fock (HF) molecular-orbital determinant. The HF wavefunction is constructed from the minimal number of occupied MOs (i.e., NI2 for an V-eleclron closed-shell system), each approximated as a variational linear combination of the chosen set of basis functions (vide infra). 

The density functional (DF) method has been successful and quite useful in correlating experimental results when model densities are used in the calculations. In fact, the equations characteristic of the DF method can be derived from a variational approach as Kohn and Sham showed some time ago. In this approach, when model densities are introduced, it is not always possible to relate such densities to corresponding wave functions this is the N-representability problem. Fortunately, for any normalized well behaved density there exists a Slater single determinant this type of density is then N-representable. The problem of approximately N-representable density functional density matrices has been recently discussed by Soirat et al. [118], In spite... 

In materials in which a metal-insulator transition takes place the antiferromagnetic insulating state is not the only non-metallic one possible. Thus in V02 and its alloys, which in the metallic state have the rutile structure, at low temperatures the vanadium atoms form pairs along the c-axis and the moments disappear. This gives the possibility of describing the low-temperature phase by normal band theory, but this would certainly be a bad approximation the Hubbard U is still the major term in determining the band gap. One ought to describe each pair by a London-Heitler type of wave function... 

Now, the parameter A has to be determined by a variation method. For those values of R for which A turns out to be 1, we can say that the ordinary m.o. is a valid type of approximation but for those values for which A differs considerably from 1, we interpret the significance of the wave function (8) to be that the repulsion between the electrons, tending to separate them on to different nuclei, is stronger than the additional attraction which arises when both electrons are under the influence of two nuclei. 

One not so obvious problem with the shape-consistent REP formalism (or any nodeless pseudoorbital approach) is that some molecular properties are determined primarily by the electron density in the core region (some molecular moments, Breit corrections, etc.) and cannot be computed directly from the valence-only wave function. For Phillips-Kleinman (21) types of wave functions, Daasch et al. (52) have shown that the core electron density can be approximated quite accurately by adding in the atomic core orbitals and then Schmidt orthogonalizing the valence orbitals to the core. This new set of orbitals (core plus orthogonalized valence) is a reasonable approximation to the all-electron set and can be used to compute the desired properties. This will not work for the shape-consistent case because / from Eq. (18) cannot be accurately described in terms of the core orbitals alone. On the other hand, it is clear from that equation that the corelike portion of the valence orbitals could be reintroduced by adding in fy (53),... 

The CNDO/2 method (a particular type of parametrization of the CNDO method) has been and is being used widely by various investigators to determine approximate electronic wave functions and energies. 

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