Determination of diabatic states through enforcement of configurational uniformity

. An electronic structure-based construction of diabatic states from adiabatic states is formulated that is applicable when individual diabatic states contain several dominant configurations. It is accomplished by maximizing the electronic uniformity of the diabatic states with respect to their dominant configurations throughout the entire nuclear coordinate region. The configurations are generated from unambiguously defined diabatization-adapted molecular orbitals. The orthogonal transformation from adiabatic to diabatic states is deduced by an intrinsic analysis of the adiabatic CI coefficients, without calculating matrix elements of additional, derivative or non-derivative operators. The practicality of the method is demonstrated by applying it to the conical intersection region of the 1¹ A ₁ and 2¹ A ₁ states of ozone.