A comparative study of Hartree-Fock iteration techniques

We present and discuss various Hartree-Fock iteration techniques which are all derived from the simple gradient iteration step where one proceeds along the slope of steepest descent of the energy functional. Particular attention is paid to modern numerical applications where the single-particle wave functions are represented in a coordinate or momentum space grid. A quantitative, comparison is given using a one-dimensional model space. As an example the optimum method thus found is applied in a realistic three-dimensional calculation of ¹⁶O.