Theoretical Calculation of Core-Excited States along Dissociative Pathways beyond Second-Order Perturbation Theory

Simulating temperature and tautomeric effects for vibrationally resolved XPS of biomolecules: Combining time-dependent and time-independent approaches to fingerprint carbonyl groups

Carbonyl groups (C=O) play crucial roles in the photophysics and photochemistry of biological systems. O1s x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy allows for targeted investigation of the C=O group, and the coupling between C=O vibration and O1s ionization is reflected in the fine structures. To elucidate its characteristic vibronic features, systematic Franck-Condon simulations were conducted for six common biomolecules, including three purines (xanthine, caffeine, and hypoxanthine) and three pyrimidines (thymine, 5F-uracil, and uracil). The complexity of simulation for these biomolecules lies in accounting for temperature effects and potential tautomeric variations. We combined the time-dependent and time-independent methods to efficiently account for the temperature effects and to provide explicit assignments, respectively. For hypoxanthine, the tautomeric effect was considered by incorporating the Boltzmann population ratios of two tautomers. The simulations demonstrated good agreement with experimental spectra, enabling differentiation of two types of carbonyl oxygens with subtle local structural differences, positioned between two nitrogens (O1) or between one carbon and one nitrogen (O2). The analysis provided insights into the coupling between C=O vibration and O1s ionization, consistently showing an elongation of the C=O bond length (by 0.08-0.09 Å) upon O1s ionization.

Forte: A suite of advanced multireference quantum chemistry methods

Forte is an open-source library specialized in multireference electronic structure theories for molecular systems and the rapid prototyping of new methods. This paper gives an overview of the capabilities of Forte, its software architecture, and examples of applications enabled by the methods it implements.

Simulating transient X-ray photoelectron spectra of Fe(CO)5 and its photodissociation products with multireference algebraic diagrammatic construction theory

Accurate simulations of transient X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) provide unique opportunities to bridge the gap between theory and experiment in understanding the photoactivated dynamics in molecules and materials. However, simulating X-ray photoelectron spectra along a photochemical reaction pathway is challenging as it requires accurate description of electronic structure incorporating core-hole screening, orbital relaxation, electron correlation, and spin-orbit coupling in excited states or at nonequilibrium ground-state geometries. In this work, we employ the recently developed multireference algebraic diagrammatic construction theory (MR-ADC) to investigate the core-ionized states and X-ray photoelectron spectra of Fe(CO)5 and its photodissociation products (Fe(CO)4, Fe(CO)3) following excitation with 266 nm light. The simulated transient Fe 3p and CO 3σ XPS spectra incorporating spin-orbit coupling and high-order electron correlation effects are shown to be in a good agreement with the experimental measurements by Leitner et al. [J. Chem. Phys., 2018, 149, 044307]. Our calculations suggest that core-hole screening, spin-orbit coupling, and ligand-field splitting effects are similarly important in reproducing the experimentally observed chemical shifts in transient Fe 3p XPS spectra of iron carbonyl complexes. Our results also demonstrate that the MR-ADC methods can be very useful in interpreting the transient XPS spectra of transition metal compounds.

Frozen Natural Orbitals for the State-Averaged Driven Similarity Renormalization Group

We present a reduced-cost implementation of the state-averaged driven similarity renormalization group (SA-DSRG) based on the frozen natural orbital (FNO) approach. The natural orbitals (NOs) are obtained by diagonalizing the one-body reduced density matrix from SA-DSRG second-order perturbation theory (SA-DSRG-PT2). We consider three criteria to truncate the virtual NOs for the subsequent electron correlation treatment beyond SA-DSRG-PT2. An additive second-order correction is applied to the SA-DSRG Hamiltonian to reintroduce correlation effects from the discarded orbitals. The FNO SA-DSRG method is benchmarked on 35 small organic molecules in the QUEST database. When keeping 98-99% of the cumulative occupation numbers, the mean absolute error in the vertical transition energies due to FNO is less than 0.01 eV. Using the same FNO threshold, we observe a speedup of 9 times compared to the conventional SA-DSRG implementation for nickel carbonyl with a quadruple-ζ basis set. The FNO approach enables nonperturbative SA-DSRG computations on chloroiron corrole [FeCl(C19H11N4)] with more than 1000 basis functions, surpassing the current limit of a conventional implementation.

Signatures of diradicals in x-ray absorption spectroscopy

Theoretical simulations are critical to analyze and interpret the x-ray absorption spectrum of transient open-shell species. In this work, we propose a model of the many-body core-excited states of symmetric diradicals. We apply this model to analyze the carbon K-edge transitions of o-, m-, and p-benzyne, three organic diradicals with diverse and unusual electronic structures. The predictions of our model are compared with high-level multireference computations of the K-edge spectrum of the benzynes obtained with the driven similarity renormalization group truncated to third order. Our model shows the importance of a many-body treatment of the core-excited states of the benzynes and provides a theoretical framework to understand which properties of the ground state of these diradicals can be extracted from their x-ray spectrum.

A study of core-excited states of organic molecules computed with the generalized active space driven similarity renormalization group

This work examines the accuracy and precision of x-ray absorption spectra computed with a multireference approach that combines generalized active space (GAS) references with the driven similarity renormalization group (DSRG). We employ the x-ray absorption benchmark of organic molecule (XABOOM) set, consisting of 116 transitions from mostly organic molecules [Fransson et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. 17, 1618 (2021)]. Several approximations to a full-valence active space are examined and benchmarked. Absolute excitation energies and intensities computed with the GAS-DSRG truncated to second-order in perturbation theory are found to systematically underestimate experimental and reference theoretical values. Third-order perturbative corrections significantly improve the accuracy of GAS-DSRG absolute excitation energies, bringing the mean absolute deviation from experimental values down to 0.32 eV. The ozone molecule and glyoxylic acid are particularly challenging for second-order perturbation theory and are examined in detail to assess the importance of active space truncation and intruder states.

Assessment of State-Averaged Driven Similarity Renormalization Group on Vertical Excitation Energies: Optimal Flow Parameters and Applications to Nucleobases

We present a comprehensive excited-state benchmark for the state-averaged (SA) driven similarity renormalization group (DSRG) [Li, C.; Evangelista, F. A. J. Chem. Phys. 2018, 148, 124106]. Following the QUEST database [Véril, M.; Scemama, A.; Caffarel, M.; Lipparini, F.; Boggio-Pasqua, M.; Jacquemin, D.; Loos, P.-F. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Comput. Mol. Sci. 2021, 11, e1517], 280 vertical transition energies of 35 medium-sized molecules are computed using the SA-DSRG derived second- and third-order perturbation theories (PT2/PT3) along with a nonperturbative approach [sq-LDSRG(2)]. Comparing to the theoretical best estimates, the optimal flow parameter is found to be 0.35 and 2.0 Eh-2 for SA-DSRG-PT2 and SA-DSRG-PT3, respectively. For SA-sq-LDSRG(2), a flow parameter of 1.5 Eh-2 provides converged equations without compromising the accuracy. We then assess the accuracy of the SA-DSRG hierarchy using these parameters. The SA-DSRG-PT2 scheme outperforms the level-shifted CASPT2 by 0.10 eV in mean absolute error (MAE), yet this accuracy is slightly inferior than that of CASPT2 with the ionization-potential-electron-affinity shift. Both SA-DSRG-PT3 and SA-sq-LDSRG(2) yield a MAE of 0.10 eV, which is comparable to that of CASPT3 (0.09 eV). Finally, we compute vertical excitation energies of several low-lying singlet states of nucleobases. The SA-sq-LDSRG(2) approach provides highly accurate results for π → π* excitations, while n → π* transitions are better described by SA-DSRG-PT3.

Accurate core excitation and ionization energies from a state-specific coupled-cluster singles and doubles approach

We investigate the use of orbital-optimized references in conjunction with single-reference coupled-cluster theory with single and double substitutions (CCSD) for the study of core excitations and ionizations of 18 small organic molecules, without the use of response theory or equation-of-motion (EOM) formalisms. Three schemes are employed to successfully address the convergence difficulties associated with the coupled-cluster equations, and the spin contamination resulting from the use of a spin symmetry-broken reference, in the case of excitations. In order to gauge the inherent potential of the methods studied, an effort is made to provide reasonable basis set limit estimates for the transition energies. Overall, we find that the two best-performing schemes studied here for ΔCCSD are capable of predicting excitation and ionization energies with errors comparable to experimental accuracies. The proposed ΔCCSD schemes reduces statistical errors against experimental excitation energies by more than a factor of two when compared to the frozen-core core-valence separated (FC-CVS) EOM-CCSD approach - a successful variant of EOM-CCSD tailored towards core excitations.

Benchmark relativistic delta-coupled-cluster calculations of K-edge core-ionization energies of third-row elements

A benchmark computational study of K-edge core-ionization energies of third-row elements using relativistic delta-coupled-cluster (ΔCC) methods and a revised core-valence separation (CVS) scheme is reported. High-level relativistic (HLR) corrections beyond the spin-free exact two-component theory in its one-electron variant (SFX2C-1e), including the contributions from two-electron picture-change effects, spin-orbit coupling, the Breit term, and quantum electrodynamics effects, have been taken into account and demonstrated to play an important role. Relativistic ΔCC calculations are shown to provide accurate results for core-ionization energies of third-row elements. The SFX2C-1e-CVS-ΔCC results augmented with HLR corrections show a maximum deviation of less than 0.5 eV with respect to experimental values.