Implementation of ab initio multiple spawning in the Molpro quantum chemistry package

The ab initio multiple spawning (AIMS) method has been developed to solve the electronic and nuclear Schrodinger equations simultaneously for application to photochemical reaction dynamics. We discuss some details of the implementation of AIMS in the Molpro program package. A few aspects of the implementation are highlighted, including a new multiple timescale integrator and a scheme for solving the coupled-perturbed multiconfiguration self-consistent field (CP-MCSCF) equations in the context of ab initio molecular dynamics. The implementation is very efficient and we demonstrate calculations on the photoisomerization of ethylene using more than 5000 trajectory basis functions. We have included the capability for hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) simulations within AIMS, and we investigate the role of an argon solvent in the photoisomerization of ethylene. Somewhat surprisingly, the surrounding argon has little effect on the timescale of non-adiabatic quenching in ethylene.     

Synthesis and chemical diversity analysis of bicyclo[3.3.1]non-3-en-2-ones

Functionalized bicyclo[3.3.1]non-3-en-2-ones are obtained from commercially available phenols by a hypervalent iodine oxidation, enone epoxidation, epoxide thiolysis, and intramolecular aldol reaction sequence. Reaction optimization studies identified room temperature as well as microwave-mediated procedures, providing moderate to good yields (57-88%) in the thiophenol-mediated epoxide opening and intramolecular aldol reaction. In addition, the isolation of a key intermediate and in situ NMR studies supported the mechanistic hypothesis. The bicyclic ring products occupy novel chemical space according to ChemGPS and Chemaxon chemical diversity and cheminformatics analyses.