Nonstationarity and related measures for time‐dependent hartree–fock and multiconfigurational models

Based on an earlier article (Eberly and Singh, Phys. Rev. D 1973 , 7, 359) and related works on short‐time evolution, this article proposes a many‐electron formulation for the nonstationarity degree which can be assigned to quantum system at each time point. The key measure introduced, , is a nonstationarity index that can be thought of as an inverse nominal lifetime at each instance of time. The index is directly computed from the time derivative of one‐electron density matrix and is a size‐consistent quantity. In this article, the approach is developed for the time‐dependent Hartree–Fock (TDHF), single‐excitation (TDCIS), and time‐dependent full configuration interaction (TDFCI) models. As a rule, nonstationarity effects are more pronounced in correlated electron systems, and a joint analysis of and the multiconfigurational character of wave functions apparently provide a deeper insight into dynamical molecular processes. The performed calculations on small molecules in laser fields show a preference for the TDCIS model when comparing TDCIS and TDHF with the “exact” TDFCI model. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.