On the use of explicitly correlated functions in variational computations for small molecules

The explicitly correlated wave functions used in variational molecular calculations are reviewed. Different types of such functions are considered. The state of art and future perspectives are briefly discussed. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Properties of selected diatomics using variational Monte Carlo methods

Using variational Monte Carlo and highly accurate trial wave functions optimized by Filippi and Umrigar, we calculate a number of molecular properties for the ground state of Li2, Be2, B2, C2, N2, O2, and F2. This is the first time that many of these properties have been computed.     

Variational method for the calculation of the vibrational structure of the electronic spectra of polyatomic molecules. I

A method is proposed to calculate the vibrational structures of the electronic spectra of polyatomic molecules based on the variational solution of the vibrational problem in the excited state with the vibrational wave functions of the ground state as basis set. The electrono-vibrational problem leads to an evaluated and diagonalized variational matrix. The elements of the variational matrix have a simple form which is easily evaluated, has a clear physical meaning and is directly interconnected with observed spectral effects. This allows preliminary estimation of spectral phenomena and correction of the molecular model to take account of experimental results. The use of contemporary methods of diagonalization of the variational matrix, which possesses a characteristic structure, facilitates a tenfold increase in the speed of the method in comparison with traditional methods.K. A. Timiryazev Agricultural Academy. Translated from Zhurnal Strukturnoi Khimii, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 141–148, January–February, 1993.     

Two‐electron atomic systems confined within spheroidal boxes

The direct variational method is used to estimate some interesting physical properties of the He atom and the Li⁺ ion confined within impenetrable spheroidal boxes. A comparative investigation of the ground‐state energy, pressure, polarizability, dipole, and quadrupole moments with those of the He atom inside boxes with paraboloidal walls is made. The overall results show a similar qualitative behavior. However, for Li⁺ there are quantitative differences on such properties due to its major nuclear charge, as expected. The trial wave function is constructed as a product of two hydrogenic wave functions adapted to the geometry of the confining boxes. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Quant Chem 77: 509–515, 2000     

Methods of composite molecular wave functions. I. Variational principle and multiconfiguration SCF theory

The Silverstone–Stuebing variational principle for the discontinuous wave functions of one-electron systems is generalized for many-electron systems. The variational functional of energy takes real or complex value. The condition that it is real is given. Using the generalized variational principle, a multiconfiguration SCF theory for the composite molecular wave function is formulated. According to the theory, we may divide the whole space into space-filling cells, solve the SCF equations in each cell and build up the wave functions of the system by gathering the wave functions obtained in the cells. For use in the basis-set expansion method, the SCF equations are rewritten as matrix forms in which only one- and two-center integrals appear if an expansion center is located in each cell.     

Variational principles for discontinuous wave functions and the independent particle model of electronic structure

Using the variational method advanced by McCavert and Rudge, we obtain the independent particle model variational principle for loge localized discontinuous wave functions. The transformation of the variational expressions into matrix form when the loge localized discontinuous orbitals are expanded in finite basis sets is discussed. The simplifications brought about by this new method in the evaluation of molecular integrals are indicated.     

Comment on “The effect of confinement on the electronic energy and polarizability of a hydrogen molecular ion” by Josimar Fernando da Silva,Fabricio Ramos Silva and Elso Drigo Filho,Int. J. Quantum Chem. 2016, 116, 497–503

Various conceptual and numerical errors reported in the paper cited in the title of this contribution are pointed out and clarified. Our main concern is the evident violation of the variational principle, which is used in that paper for the study of the confined hydrogen molecular ion to obtain both energies and properties.     

New study of the stability and of the spectroscopy of the molecular anions NCO- and CNO-

Using highly correlated wave functions, the ground and the low lying excited states of the molecular NCO(-) and CNO(-) anions have been reinvestigated. The stability of the electronic ground state of the two isomers with respect to dissociation and to electron detachment has been checked along the isomerization pathway. The regions of stability of the excited electronic states have been analyzed and identified and it is shown that only the ground state is stable and the corresponding potential energy surface presents three equilibrium positions. The rovibronic spectroscopy of the X (1)Σ(+) state of both NCO(-) and CNO(-) isomers has been determined by a variational approach leading to remarkable agreement with experimental data.     

Variational Monte Carlo calculations for some cations and anions of the first‐row atoms using explicitly correlated wave functions

The variational Monte Carlo method is applied to calculate ground‐state energies of some cations and anions of the first‐row atoms. Accurate values providing between 80 and 90% of the correlation energy are obtained. Explicitly correlated wave functions including up to 42 variational parameters are used. The nondynamic correlation due to the 2s ? 2p near degeneracy effect is included by using a multideterminant wave function. The variational free parameters have been fixed by minimizing the energy that has shown to be a more convenient functional than the variance of the local energy, which is the most commonly employed method in variational Monte Carlo calculations. The energies obtained improve previous works using similar wave functions. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.; DOI 10.1002/qua.10125     

Computing the energy of a water molecule using multideterminants: a simple, efficient algorithm

Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods such as variational Monte Carlo and fixed node diffusion Monte Carlo depend heavily on the quality of the trial wave function. Although Slater-Jastrow wave functions are the most commonly used variational ansatz in electronic structure, more sophisticated wave functions are critical to ascertaining new physics. One such wave function is the multi-Slater-Jastrow wave function which consists of a Jastrow function multiplied by the sum of Slater determinants. In this paper we describe a method for working with these wave functions in QMC codes that is easy to implement, efficient both in computational speed as well as memory, and easily parallelized. The computational cost scales quadratically with particle number making this scaling no worse than the single determinant case and linear with the total number of excitations. Additionally, we implement this method and use it to compute the ground state energy of a water molecule.     

Excited electronic state calculations by the transcorrelated variational Monte Carlo method: application to a helium atom

We have implemented the excited electronic state calculations for a helium atom by the transcorrelated variational Monte Carlo (TC-VMC) method. In this method, Jastrow-Slater-type wave function is efficiently optimized not only for the Jastrow factor but also for the Slater determinant. Since the formalism for the TC-VMC method is based on the variance minimization, excited states as well as the ground state calculations are feasible. It is found that both the first and the second excitation energies given by TC-VMC are much closer to the experimental data than those given by the variational Monte Carlo method with using the Hartree-Fock orbitals. The successful results in the TC-VMC method are considered to be due to the nodal optimization of the wave functions.     

Simple Hamiltonians which exhibit drastic failures by variational determination of the two-particle reduced density matrix with some well known N-representability conditions

Calculations on small molecular systems indicate that the variational approach employing the two-particle reduced density matrix (2-RDM) as the basic unknown and applying the P, Q, G, T1, and T2 representability conditions provides an accuracy that is competitive with the best standard ab initio methods of quantum chemistry. However, in this paper we consider a simple class of Hamiltonians for which an exact ground state wave function can be written as a single Slater determinant and yet the same 2-RDM approach gives a drastically nonrepresentable result. This shows the need for stronger representability conditions than the mentioned ones.     

Molecular structure calculations: a unified quantum mechanical description of electrons and nuclei using explicitly correlated Gaussian functions and the global vector representation

We elaborate on the theory for the variational solution of the Schro?dinger equation of small atomic and molecular systems without relying on the Born-Oppenheimer paradigm. The all-particle Schro?dinger equation is solved in a numerical procedure using the variational principle, Cartesian coordinates, parameterized explicitly correlated Gaussian functions with polynomial prefactors, and the global vector representation. As a result, non-relativistic energy levels and wave functions of few-particle systems can be obtained for various angular momentum, parity, and spin quantum numbers. A stochastic variational optimization of the basis function parameters facilitates the calculation of accurate energies and wave functions for the ground and some excited rotational-(vibrational-)electronic states of H(2) (+) and H(2), three bound states of the positronium molecule, Ps(2), and the ground and two excited states of the (7)Li atom.     

Calculation of molecular integrals for systems confined by hard spherical walls: Use of the single‐center expansion of floating spherical gaussians

Assuming a gaussian basis set representation of atomic and molecular wave functions, the single‐center expansion of off‐centered spherical gaussian orbitals is exploited to calculate the one and two‐electron integrals for multielectronic atoms and molecules confined within hard spherical walls. As a validating test, the ground‐state energy of a helium atom positioned off‐center in a spherical box is calculated by applying the simplest form of the floating spherical gaussian orbital (FSGO) scheme, i.e., the use of a primitive basis set consisting of a single FSGO per electron pair. Comparison with corresponding recent accurate calculations gives supporting evidence of the adequacy of the method for its application to more elaborate gaussian‐type basis set representations for confined atoms and molecules. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Quant Chem 83: 271–278, 2001     

The variational explicit polarization potential and analytical first derivative of energy: Towards a next generation force field

A previous article proposed an electronic structure-based polarizable potential, called the explicit polarization (X-POL) potential, to treat many-body polarization and charge delocalization effects in polypeptides. Here, we present a variational version of the X-POL potential, in which the wave function of the entire molecular system is variationally optimized to yield the minimum total electronic energy. This allows the calculation of analytic gradients, a necessity for efficient molecular dynamics simulations. In this paper, the detailed derivations of the Fock matrix and analytic force are presented and discussed. The calculations involve a double self-consistent-field procedure in which the wave function of each fragment is self-consistently optimized in the presence of other fragments, and in addition the polarization of the entire system is self-consistently optimized. The variational X-POL potential has been implemented in the Chemistry at Harvard Molecular Mechanics (CHARMM) package and tested successfully for small model compounds.     

Energies of the first row atoms from quantum Monte Carlo

All-electron variational and diffusion quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the ground state energies of the first row atoms (from Li to Ne) are reported. The authors use trial wave functions of four types: single-determinant Slater-Jastrow wave functions, multideterminant Slater-Jastrow wave functions, single-determinant Slater-Jastrow wave functions with backflow transformations, and multideterminant Slater-Jastrow wave functions with backflow transformations. At the diffusion quantum Monte Carlo level and using their multideterminant Slater-Jastrow wave functions with backflow transformations, they recover 99% or more of the correlation energies for Li, Be, B, C, N, and Ne, 97% for O, and 98% for F.     

A ground state potential energy surface for H2 using Monte Carlo methods

Using variational Monte Carlo and a simple explicitly correlated wave function we have computed the Born-Oppenheimer energy of the H2 ground state (X 1Sigmag+) at 24 internuclear distances. We have also calculated the diagonal correction to the Born-Oppenheimer approximation and the lowest-order relativistic corrections at each distance using variational Monte Carlo techniques. The nonadiabatic values are evaluated from numerical derivatives of the wave function with respect to the nuclear coordinates. With this potential energy surface we have computed several of the lowest vibrational-rotational energies for this system. Our results are in good agreement with the best values found in the literature.     

Confined helium atom low-lying S states analyzed through correlated Hylleraas wave functions and the Kohn-Sham model

Calculation including the electron correlation effects is reported for the ground 1 1S and lowest triplet 1 3S state energies of the confined helium atom placed at the center of an impenetrable spherical box. While the adopted wave-functional treatment involves optimization of three nonlinear parameters and 10, 20, and 40 linear coefficients contained in wave functions expressed in a generalized Hylleraas basis set that explicitly incorporates the interelectronic distance r12, via a Slater-type exponent and through polynomial terms entering the expansion, the Kohn-Sham model employed here uses the Perdew and Wang exchange-correlation functional in its spin-polarized version within the local-density approximation (LDA) with and without the self-interaction correction. All these calculations predict a systematic increase in the singlet-triplet energy splitting toward the high confinement regime, i.e., when the box radius is reduced. By using the variational results as benchmark, it is found that the LDA underestimates the singlet-triplet energy splitting, whereas the self-interaction correction overestimates such a quantity.     

The optimized-basis-set multiconfiguration spin-coupled method for the ab initio calculation of atomic and molecular electronic wave functions

An ab initio method for the calculation of atomic and molecular electronic wave functions is presented. The “Optimized-Basis-Set Multiconfiguration Spin-Coupled” (OBS –MCSC ) method may be viewed either as a multiconfiguration generalization of the spin-coupled approach or as a nonorthogonal variant of the MCSCF method. In addition, the OBS –MCSC method optimizes the basis-set exponential parameters simultaneously with all other variational parameters, through a second-derivative minimization procedure. Explicit analytic expressions for the required first and second derivatives of the energy with respect to all variational parameters are obtained. Test calculations prove the capability of the method to yield compact yet accurate electronic wave functions.© 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.