The vertical spectrum of H2CO revisited: (SC)2-CI and CC calculations

Theoretical study of spectral intensities of formaldehyde in the discrete and continuum regions

Theoretical absorption oscillator strengths for transitions involving Rydberg states in molecular formaldehyde as well as cross sections for photoionization Rydberg channels associated with the production of the lowest parent ion electronic state are reported. The calculations have been performed with the molecular quantum defect orbital (MQDO) method. A test on the MQDO f values has been its comparison with previous experiments and calculations and its compliance with the expected systematic trends along the Rydberg series. The use of the MQDO method as an alternative to ab initio methods, which find serious difficulties in calculating spectral intensities in formaldehyde, is proposed. We hope that the spectroscopic data, many of them reported here for the first time, may be useful for the interpretation of the vacuum ultraviolet spectrum of this molecule.

Ab initio n-electron valence state perturbation theory study of the adiabatic transitions in carbonyl molecules: Formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone

The application of the recently developed second-order n-electron valence state perturbation theory (NEVPT2) to small carbonyl molecules (formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and acetone) is presented. The adiabatic transition energies are computed for the singlet and triplet n-->pi(*), pi-->pi(*), and sigma-->pi(*) states performing a full geometry optimization of the relevant states at the single state CASSCF level and taking into account the zero point energy correction in the harmonic approximation. The agreement with the known experimental values and with previously published high level calculations confirms that NEVPT2 is an efficient tool to be used for the interpretation of molecular electronic spectra. Moreover, different insight into the nature of the excited states has been obtained. Some of the transitions presented here have never been theoretically computed previously [(3)(pi-->pi(*)) and (3)(sigma-->pi(*)) adiabatic transitions in acetaldehyde and acetone] or have been studied only using moderate level (single reference based) ab initio methods (all adiabatic transitions in acetaldehyde). In the present work a consistent disagreement between NEVPT2 and experiment has been found for the (3)(pi-->pi(*)) adiabatic transition in all molecules: this result is attributed to the low intensity of the transition to the first vibrational levels of the excited state. The n-->pi(*) singlet and triplet vertical transition energies are also reported for all the molecules.

Multistate active spaces from local CAS-SCF molecular orbitals: The photodissociation of HFCO as an example

A recently developed algorithm to generate localized molecular orbitals (LMO) is applied to the study of excited states along a photodissociation process. The LMOs allow for the selection of a consistent complete active space (CAS) for the simultaneous description of all the electronic states involved in a multistate process on the basis of simple chemical criteria. The local nature of the orbitals is used to label them in a unique way that does not depend on the molecular geometry. The selection of the electronic configurations of interest for the set of target states on only the basis of the dominant excitations required by the simplest configuration interaction (CI) descriptions for both ground and excited states is fairly simplified. The following of the changes in the nature of the states along cuts in the set of potential energy surfaces (PES) is also simpler. The C--F bond breaking and the states involved in the photodissociation of the HFCO system, together with another geometrical path along the PES of the same previous states, are studied by way of examples in this work. The local nature of the MOs warrants that this small system is representative enough to show the advantages of the procedure and that its application to larger systems (R-FCO systems) would be straightforward.

Excitation energies for a benchmark set of molecules obtained within time-dependent current-density functional theory using the Vignale–Kohn functional

In this article we explain how the existing linear response theory of time-dependent density-functional theory can be extended to obtain excitation energies in the framework of time-dependent current-density-functional theory. We use the Vignale-Kohn current-functional [G. Vignale and W. Kohn, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 2037 (1996)] which has proven to be successful for describing ultranonlocal exchange-correlation effects in the case of the axial polarizability of molecular chains [M. van Faassen, P. L. de Boeij, R. van Leeuwen, J. A. Berger, and J. G. Snijders, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 186401 (2002); J. Chem. Phys. 118, 1044 (2003)]. We study a variety of singlet excitations for a benchmark set of molecules. The pi(*)<--pi transitions obtained with the Vignale-Kohn functional are in good agreement with experiment and other theoretical results and they are in general an improvement upon the adiabatic local density approximation. In case of the pi(*)<--n transitions the Vignale-Kohn functional fails, giving results that strongly overestimate the experimental and other theoretical results. The benchmark set also contains some other types of excitations for which no clear failures or improvements are observed.

Higher-order equation-of-motion coupled-cluster methods

The equation-of-motion coupled-cluster (EOM-CC) methods truncated after double, triple, or quadruple cluster and linear excitation operators (EOM-CCSD, EOM-CCSDT, and EOM-CCSDTQ) have been derived and implemented into parallel execution programs. They compute excitation energies, excited-state dipole moments, and transition moments of closed- and open-shell systems, taking advantage of spin, spatial (real Abelian), and permutation symmetries simultaneously and fully (within the spin-orbital formalisms). The related Lambda equation solvers for coupled-cluster (CC) methods through and up to connected quadruple excitation (CCSD, CCSDT, and CCSDTQ) have also been developed. These developments have been achieved, by virtue of the algebraic and symbolic manipulation program that automated the formula derivation and implementation altogether. The EOM-CC methods and CC Lambda equations introduce a class of second quantized ansatz with a de-excitation operator (Y), a number of excitation operators (X), and a physical (e.g., the Hamiltonian) operator (A), leading to the tensor contraction expressions that can be performed in the order of ((...((yx)x)...)x)a or ((...((ax)x)...)x)y at the minimal peak operation cost, where x, y, and a are basis-set representations (i.e., tensors) of the respective operators X, Y, and A. Any intermediate tensor resulting from either contraction order is shown to have at most six groups of permutable indices, and this knowledge is used to guide the computer-synthesized programs to fully exploit the permutation symmetry of any tensor to minimize the arithmetic and memory costs.