Ab initio molecular orbital calculations on some selected boron(I) hydrides

Ab initio LCAO-MO-SCF Hartree-Fock-Roothaan calculations have been carried out for a series of closed-shell boron hydrides (B³⁺, B⁺ BH, BH₂⁻,BH₂⁺, BH₃ and BH₄⁻). Koopmans' theorem vertical ionization potentials for the core and highest occupied molecular orbitals are presented. Proton and hydride affinities of some of these molecules have been calculated along with the energies of reaction between various pairs of these boron hydrides.     

Calculation of vertical ionization potentials with the Piris natural orbital functional

The Piris natural orbital functional (PNOF) based on a new approach for the two-electron cummulant has been used to predict vertical ionization potentials of 15 molecules. The ionization energies have been calculated using the extended Koopmans' theorem. The calculated PNOF values are in good agreement with the corresponding experimental data.     

Ionization energies of Ni(II) and Cu(II) bis-chelates with sulphur-containing ligands

Quantum-chemical calculations on Ni(II) and Cu(II) dithiophosphates and dimethyldithiocarbaminates, Cu(II)difluorodithiophosphate and their cations have been done using the MOLCAO method with semiempirical approximation CNDO/2. Ionization potentials calculated in accordance with Koopmans' theorem and as differences between total energies of neutral molecules and cations are discussed. It was found that MO rescaling observed under ionization is more essential for Ni(II) than for Cu(II) compounds. In Ni(II) chelates the orbital energies of neutral molecules correlate linearly with the experimental ionization potentials.     

MS-CASPT2 calculation of excess electron transfer in stacked DNA nucleobases

Calculations using the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) and complete active space second-order perturbation (CASPT2) methods, and the multistate formulation of CASPT2 (MS-CASPT2), are performed for the ground and excited states of radical anions consisting of two pi-stacked nucleobases. The electronic couplings for excess electron transfer (EET) in the pi-stacks are estimated by using the generalized Mulliken-Hush approach. We compare results obtained within the different methods with data derived using Koopmans' theorem approximation at the Hartree-Fock level. The results suggest that although the one-electron scheme cannot be applied to calculate electron affinities of nucleobases, it provides reasonable estimates for EET energies. The electronic couplings calculated with KTA lie between the CASPT2 and the MS-CASPT2 based values in almost all cases.     

The spin-unrestricted molecular Kohn-Sham solution and the analogue of Koopmans's theorem for open-shell molecules

Spin-unrestricted Kohn-Sham (KS) solutions are constructed from accurate ab initio spin densities for the prototype doublet molecules NO(2), ClO(2), and NF(2) with the iterative local updating procedure of van Leeuwen and Baerends (LB). A qualitative justification of the LB procedure is given with a "strong" form of the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem. The calculated energies epsilon(isigma) of the occupied KS spin orbitals provide numerical support to the analogue of Koopmans' theorem in spin-density functional theory. In particular, the energies -epsilon(ibeta) of the minor spin (beta) valence orbitals of the considered doublet molecules correspond fairly well to the experimental vertical ionization potentials (VIPs) I(i) (1) to the triplet cationic states. The energy -epsilon(Halpha) of the highest occupied (spin-unpaired) alpha orbital is equal to the first VIP I(H) (0) to the singlet cationic state. In turn, the energies -epsilon(ialpha) of the major spin (alpha) valence orbitals of the closed subshells correspond to a fifty-fifty average of the experimental VIPs I(i) (1) and I(i) (0) to the triplet and singlet states. For the Li atom we find that the exact spin densities are represented by a spin-polarized Kohn-Sham system which is not in its ground state, i.e., the orbital energy of the lowest unoccupied beta spin orbital is lower than that of the highest occupied alpha spin orbital ("a hole below the Fermi level"). The addition of a magnetic field in the -z direction will shift the beta levels up so as to restore the Aufbau principle. This is an example of the nonuniqueness of the mapping of the spin density on the KS spin-dependent potentials discussed recently in the literature. The KS potentials may no longer go to zero at infinity, and it is in general the differences nu(ssigma)( infinity )-epsilon(isigma) that can be interpreted as (averages of) ionization energies. In total, the present results suggest the spin-unrestricted KS theory as a natural one-electron independent-particle model for interpretation and assignment of the experimental photoelectron spectra of open-shell molecules.     

Approximate relativistic Hartree-Fock equations and their solution within a minimum basis set of slater-type functions

Relativistic closed-shell atoms are treated by the use of a specific approximation for the small component of the one-electron Dirac spinors. It is assumed that the large and the small component are interconnected by a parameter-dependent relation which is formally analogous to that of the one-electron system. Subject to this constraint, the total energy is varied with respect to the large components. The resulting eigenvalue equations for the large components contain only regular potential terms and reduce to the familiar Hartree-Fock equations in the limit of infinite velocity of light. Analytical solution of these approximate relativistic Hartree-Fock equations is achieved using a minimum basis set of Slater-type functions for the expansion of the radial part of the large components. Total relativistic energies, orbital energies, orbital exponents and mean radii are calculated for the ground states of He, Be, Ne, Mg, Ar, Kr Xe and Cu⁺. Dedicated to Prof. O. E. Polansky on occasion of his 60th birthday.     

The extended Koopmans' theorem: vertical ionization potentials from natural orbital functional theory

The Piris natural orbital functional, PNOF5, has been used to predict vertical ionization potentials of a selected set of 30 organic and inorganic spin-compensated molecules by means of the extended Koopmans' theorem. Electron affinities of 10 selected radicals have also been estimated as the inverse of the ionization potentials of the anionic species, calculated at the experimental geometries of the neutral radicals. The basis set limit effects have been assessed by inspecting the data obtained for the Dunning's basis set series cc-pVXZ and aug-cc-pVXZ (X = D, T, Q, 5). The performance of the PNOF5 is established by carrying out a statistical analysis of the mean absolute errors (MAEs) with respect to the experiment values. The calculated PNOF5 ionization potentials and electron affinities agree satisfactorily with the corresponding experimental data, with MAEs smaller than 0.5 eV.     

The virial theorem as an entail for Koopmans' theorem in atomic calculations

The frozen approximation in the Koopmans' theorem suggests that the virial theorem is not obeyed. By imposing the virial theorem to Koopmans' theorem, we observe that the ionization potential of an atomic orbital is directly related to the respective kinetic energy and that the virial theorem introduces some reorganization effect on the electronic cloud. The quantity of reorganization introduced is not hazard, depending on the type of atom as well as the atomic orbital.     

Excitation energies expressed as orbital energies of Kohn–Sham density functional theory with long-range corrected functionals

A new simple and conceptual theoretical scheme is proposed for estimating one-electron excitation energies using Kohn–Sham (KS) solutions. One-electron transitions that are dominated by the promotion from one initially occupied orbital to one unoccupied orbital of a molecular system can be expressed in a two-step process, ionization, and electron attachment. KS with long-range corrected (LC) functionals satisfies Janak's theorem and LC total energy varies almost linearly as a function of its fractional occupation number between the integer electron points. Thus, LC reproduces ionization energies (IPs) and electron affinities (EAs) with high accuracy and one-electron excitation energies are expressed as the difference between the occupied orbital energy of a neutral molecule and the corresponding unoccupied orbital energy of its cation. Two such expressions can be used, with one employing the orbital energies for the neutral and cationic systems, while the other utilizes orbital energies of just the cation. Because the EA of a molecule is the IP of its anion, if we utilize this identity, the two expressions coincide and give the same excitation energies. Reasonable results are obtained for valence and core excitations using only orbital energies.     

Spin-Projected EHF equations

Extended Hartree-Fock (EHF ) equations are developed for the general open-shell case using a modified pair-orthogonality-constrained variation (POCV ) method. The EHF energy is expressed in terms of corresponding orbitals that are required to remain orthogonal and paired for all arbitrary infinitesimal variations. The Euler equations for each set of orbitals are reduced to unique pseudosecular equations, the LCAO form of which may easily be derived. The Euler equations and the expressions obtained for the off-diagonal elements of the ?^γδ (γ, δ = a or b) matrices for the closed-shell case are identical to those obtained by Mayer, who used the generalized Brillouin theorem method. However, the present method yields equations for both closed- and open-shell cases and for any spin state.     

Spin-orbit relativistic long-range corrected time-dependent density functional theory for investigating spin-forbidden transitions in photochemical reactions

A long-range corrected (LC) time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) incorporating relativistic effects with spin-orbit couplings is presented. The relativistic effects are based on the two-component zeroth-order regular approximation Hamiltonian. Before calculating the electronic excitations, we calculated the ionization potentials (IPs) of alkaline metal, alkaline-earth metal, group 12 transition metal, and rare gas atoms as the minus orbital (spinor) energies on the basis of Koopmans' theorem. We found that both long-range exchange and spin-orbit coupling effects are required to obtain Koopmans' IPs, i.e., the orbital (spinor) energies, quantitatively in DFT calculations even for first-row transition metals and systems containing large short-range exchange effects. We then calculated the valence excitations of group 12 transition metal atoms and the Rydberg excitations of rare gas atoms using spin-orbit relativistic LC-TDDFT. We found that the long-range exchange and spin-orbit coupling effects significantly contribute to the electronic spectra of even light atoms if the atoms have low-lying excitations between orbital spinors of quite different electron distributions.     

Explicitly correlated RMP2 for high-spin open-shell reference states

We present an explicitly correlated version of the high-spin open-shell RMP2 method. The theory is derived in a unitarily invariant form, which is suitable for the insertion of local approximations. It is demonstrated that the rapid basis set convergence of closed-shell MP2-F12 is also achieved in RMP2-F12, and similar Ansatze and approximations can be employed. All integrals are computed using efficient density fitting approximations, and many-electron integrals are avoided using resolution of the identity approximations. The performance of the method is demonstrated by benchmark calculations on a large set of ionization potentials, electron affinities and atomization energies. Using triple-zeta basis sets RMP2-F12 yields results that are closer to the basis set limit than standard RMP2 with augmented quintuple-zeta basis sets for all properties. Different variants of perturbative corrections for the open-shell Hartree-Fock treatment are described and tested.     

Communication: ROHF theory made simple

Restricted open-shell Hartree-Fock (ROHF) theory is formulated as a projected self-consistent unrestricted HF (UHF) model by mathematically constraining spin density eigenvalues. This constrained UHF (CUHF) wave function is identical to that obtained from Roothaan's effective Fock operator. The α and β CUHF Fock operators are parameter-free and have eigenvalues (orbital energies) that are physically meaningful as in UHF, except for eliminating spin contamination. This new way of solving ROHF leads to orbitals that turn out to be identical to semicanonical orbitals. The present approach removes ambiguities in ROHF orbital energies.     

Calculation of vertical ionization potentials of ketene by perturbation corrections to Koopmans' theorem

The vertical ionization potentials of ketene are calculated by perturbation corrections to Koopmans' theorem. The present results are compared with those from the pseudonatural orbital coupled electron pair approach and the experimental values.     

Orbital energies and negative electron affinities from density functional theory: Insight from the integer discontinuity

Orbital energies in Kohn-Sham density functional theory (DFT) are investigated, paying attention to the role of the integer discontinuity in the exact exchange-correlation potential. A series of closed-shell molecules are considered, comprising some that vertically bind an excess electron and others that do not. High-level ab initio electron densities are used to calculate accurate orbital energy differences, Deltavarepsilon, between the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) and the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), using the same potential for both. They are combined with accurate vertical ionization potentials, I(0), and electron affinities, A(0), to determine accurate "average" orbital energies. These are the orbital energies associated with an exchange-correlation potential that averages over a constant jump in the accurate potential, of magnitude Delta(XC)=(I(0)-A(0))-Deltavarepsilon, as given by the discontinuity analysis. Local functional HOMO energies are shown to be almost an order of magnitude closer to these average values than to -I(0), with typical discrepancies of just 0.02 a.u. For systems that do not bind an excess electron, this level of agreement is only achieved when A(0) is set equal to the negative experimental affinity from electron transmission spectroscopy (ETS); it degrades notably when the zero ground state affinity is instead used. Analogous observations are made for the local functional LUMO energies, although the need to use the ETS affinities is less pronounced for systems where the ETS values are very negative. The application of an asymptotic correction recovers the preference, leading to positive LUMO energies (but bound orbitals) for these systems, consistent with the behavior of the average energies. The asymptotically corrected LUMO energies typically agree with the average values to within 0.02 a.u., comparable to that observed with the HOMOs. The study provides numerical support for the view that local functionals exhibit a near-average behavior based on a constant jump of magnitude Delta(XC). It illustrates why a recently proposed DFT expression involving local functional frontier orbital energies and ionization potential yields reasonable estimates of negative ETS affinities and is consistent with earlier work on the failure of DFT for charge-transfer excited states. The near-average behavior of the exchange-correlation potential is explicitly illustrated for selected systems. The nature of hybrid functional orbital energies is also mentioned, and the results of the study are discussed in terms of the variation in electronic energy as a function of electron number. The nature of DFT orbital energies is of great importance in chemistry; this study contributes to the understanding of these quantities.     

Linearity condition for orbital energies in density functional theory: construction of orbital-specific hybrid functional

This study proposes a novel approach to construct the orbital-specific (OS) hybrid exchange-correlation functional by imposing the linearity condition: ?(2)E/?f(i)(2)|(0≤f(i)≤1) = ??(i)/?f(i)|(0≤f(i)≤1) = 0, where E, ε(i), and f(i) represent the total energy, orbital energy, and occupation number of the ith orbital. The OS hybrid exchange-correlation functional, of which the OS Hartree-Fock exchange (HFx) portion is determined by the linearity condition, reasonably reproduces the ionization potentials not only from valence orbitals but also from core ones in a sense of Koopmans' theorem. The obtained short-range HFx portions are consistent with the parameters empirically determined in core-valence-Rydberg-Becke-3-parameter-Lee-Yang-Parr hybrid functional [Nakata et al., J. Chem. Phys., 124, 094105 (2006); ibid, 125, 064109 (2006)].     

On the quantum chemical origin for the nonvalidity of Koopmans' theorem in transitionmetal compounds

The quantum chemical origin for the nonvalidity of Koopmans' theorem in transitionmetal compounds of the 3d series is analyzed by means of the Green's function formalism applied in the framework of a semiempirical INDO Hamiltonian. In the case of ferrocene (1), cyclobutadiene iron tricarbonyl (2) and irontetracarbonyl dihydride (3) the self-energy part of a geometric approximation has been partitioned into relaxation and correlation (pair removal, pair relaxation) increments. The breakdown of Koopmans' theorem for strongly localized MOs with large Fe 3d amplitudes is predominantly the result of electronic relaxation lowering the calculated ionization potentials. On the other hand the variation of the pair correlation energy in the cationic hole-state is by no means negligible and acts into the opposite direction as the relaxation increment. These significant pair relaxation contributions explain the wellknown failtures of the ΔSCF approach in combination with large scaleab initio bases. The loss of ground state pair correlation in the outer valence region is small in comparison to relaxation and pair relaxation. The magnitude of the aforementioned reorganization increments has been studied as a function of the localization properties of the MOs and as a function of the one-electron energies of the available particle- and hole-states. The computational findings derived with the INDO model are compared with recentab initio studies.     

Physical properties of many-electron atomic systems evaluated from analytical Hartree-Fock functions

The promotion energies, ionization potentials, electron affinities, and orbital electronegativities for the valence states of importance in atoms of the first two rows of the periodic system have been evaluated from analytical Hartree-Fock functions for the corresponding groundstates. The agreement with existing values, determined from experimental data, is very satisfactory.This work has been supported in part by the National Research Council of Canada.     

Koopmans' theorem for large molecular systems within density functional theory

It is shown that in density functional theory (DFT), Koopmans' theorem for a large molecular system can be stated as follows: The ionization energy of the system equals the negative of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy plus the Coulomb electrostatic energy of removing an electron from the system, or equivalently, the ionization energy of an N-electron system is the negative of the arithmetic average of the HOMO energy of this system and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy of the (N - 1)-electron system. Relations between this DFT Koopmans' theorem and its existing counterparts in the literature are discussed. Some of the previous results are generalized and some are simplified. DFT calculation results of a fullerene molecule, a finite single-walled carbon nanotube and a finite boron nitride nanotube are presented, indicating that this Koopmans' theorem approximately holds, even if the orbital relaxation is taken into consideration.     

Two-component relativistic density-functional calculations of the dimers of the halogens from bromine through element 117 using effective core potential and all-electron methods

A two-component quasirelativistic Hamiltonian based on spin-dependent effective core potentials is used to calculate ionization energies and electron affinities of the heavy halogen atom bromine through the superheavy element 117 (eka-astatine) as well as spectroscopic constants of the homonuclear dimers of these atoms. We describe a two-component Hartree-Fock and density-functional program that treats spin-orbit coupling self-consistently within the orbital optimization procedure. A comparison with results from high-order Douglas-Kroll calculations--for the superheavy systems also with zeroth-order regular approximation and four-component Dirac results--demonstrates the validity of the pseudopotential approximation. The density-functional (but not the Hartree-Fock) results show very satisfactory agreement with theoretical coupled cluster as well as experimental data where available, such that the theoretical results can serve as an estimate for the hitherto unknown properties of astatine, element 117, and their dimers.