1,274 research outputs found
Development of Novel Density Functionals for Thermochemical Kinetics
A new density functional theory (DFT) exchange-correlation functional for the
exploration of reaction mechanisms is proposed. This new functional, denoted
BMK (Boese-Martin for Kinetics), has an accuracy in the 2 kcal/mol range for
transition state barriers but, unlike previous attempts at such a functional,
this improved accuracy does not come at the expense of equilibrium properties.
This makes it a general-purpose functional whose domain of applicability has
been extended to transition states, rather than a specialized functional for
kinetics. The improvement in BMK rests on the inclusion of the kinetic energy
density together with a large value of the exact exchange mixing coefficient.
For this functional, the kinetic energy density appears to correct `back' the
excess exact exchange mixing for ground-state properties, possibly simulating
variable exchange.Comment: J. Chem. Phys., in press (303431JCP, scheduled for August 15, 2004
issue); supplementary data available at
http://theochem.weizmann.ac.il/web/papers/BMK.htm
Intoxicating Liquor - Persons Liable - A Social Host Who Furnishes Alcoholic Beverages to an Obviously Intoxicated Person May Be Held Accountable to Third Persons Who Are Foreseeably Injured
From ab initio quantum chemistry to molecular dynamics: The delicate case of hydrogen bonding in ammonia
The ammonia dimer (NH3)2 has been investigated using high--level ab initio
quantum chemistry methods and density functional theory (DFT). The structure
and energetics of important isomers is obtained to unprecedented accuracy
without resorting to experiment. The global minimum of eclipsed C_s symmetry is
characterized by a significantly bent hydrogen bond which deviates from
linearity by about 20 degrees. In addition, the so-called cyclic C_{2h}
structure is extremely close in energy on an overall flat potential energy
surface. It is demonstrated that none of the currently available (GGA,
meta--GGA, and hybrid) density functionals satisfactorily describe the
structure and relative energies of this nonlinear hydrogen bond. We present a
novel density functional, HCTH/407+, designed to describe this sort of hydrogen
bond quantitatively on the level of the dimer, contrary to e.g. the widely used
BLYP functional. This improved functional is employed in Car-Parrinello ab
initio molecular dynamics simulations of liquid ammonia to judge its
performance in describing the associated liquid. Both the HCTH/407+ and BLYP
functionals describe the properties of the liquid well as judged by analysis of
radial distribution functions, hydrogen bonding structure and dynamics,
translational diffusion, and orientational relaxation processes. It is
demonstrated that the solvation shell of the ammonia molecule in the liquid
phase is dominated by steric packing effects and not so much by directional
hydrogen bonding interactions. In addition, the propensity of ammonia molecules
to form bifurcated and multifurcated hydrogen bonds in the liquid phase is
found to be negligibly small.Comment: Journal of Chemical Physics, in press (305335JCP
Anharmonic force fields of perchloric acid, HClO, and perchloric anhydride, ClO. An extreme case of inner polarization
DFT (density functional theory) anharmonic force fields with basis sets near
the Kohn-Sham limit have been obtained for perchloric acid, HClO, and
perchloric anhydride, ClO. Calculated fundamental frequencies are in
very good agreement with available experimental data. Some reassignments in the
vibrational spectra of ClO are proposed based on our calculations.
HClO and ClO are particularly severe examples of the `inner
polarization' phenomenon. The polarization consistent basis sets pc-1 and pc-2
(as well as their augmented counterparts) should be supplemented with two
(preferably three) and one (preferably two) high-exponent functions,
respectively, on second-row atoms. Complete anharmonic force fields are
available as electronic supporting information.Comment: J. Mol. Struct., in press (special issue); Electronic Supporting
Information at http://theochem.weizmann.ac.il/web/papers/Cl2O7.htm
Thermoelectric effects in Kondo correlated quantum dots
In this Letter we study thermoelectric effects in ultra small quantum dots.
We study the behaviour of the thermopower, Peltier coefficient and thermal
conductance both in the sequencial tunneling regime and in the regime where
Kondo correlations develope. Both cases of linear response and non-equilibrium
induced by strong temperature gradients are considered. The thermopower is a
very sensitive tool to detect Kondo correlations. It changes sign both as a
function of temperature and temperature gradient. We also discuss violations of
the Wiedemann-Franz law.Comment: 7 pages; 5 figure
How Does Democracy Cause Growth?
Recent empirical work has established that 'democracy causes growth'. In this paper, we determine the underlying institutions which drive this relationship using data from the Varieties of Democracy project. We sketch how incentives and opportunities as well as the distribution of political power shaped by underlying institutions, in combination with the extent of the market, endogenously form an 'economic blueprint for growth', which likely differs across countries. We take our model to the data by adopting novel heterogeneous treatment effects estimators, which allow for non-parallel trends and selection into institutional change, and run horse races between underlying institutions. We find that freedom of expression, clean elections, and legislative executive constraints are the foremost drivers of long-run development. Erosion of these institutions, as witnessed recently in many countries, may jeopardise the perpetual growth effect of becoming a liberal democracy we establish for the post-WWII period
Mechanical Cooper pair transportation as a source of long distance superconducting phase coherence
Transportation of Cooper-pairs by a movable single Cooper-pair-box placed
between two remote superconductors is shown to establish coherent coupling
between them. This coupling is due to entanglement of the movable box with the
leads and is manifested in the supression of quantum fluctuations of the
relative phase of the order parameters of the leads. It can be probed by
attaching a high resistance Josephson junction between the leads and measuring
the current through this junction. The current is suppressed with increasing
temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX; Updated version, typos correcte
A Multimer Embedding Approach for Molecular Crystals up to Harmonic Vibrational Properties
Accurate calculations of molecular crystals are crucial for drug design and
crystal engineering. However, periodic high-level density functional
calculations using hybrid functionals are often prohibitively expensive for
relevant systems. These expensive periodic calculations can be circumvented by
the usage of embedding methods in which for instance the periodic calculation
is only performed at a lower-cost level and then monomer energies and dimer
interactions are replaced by those of the higher-level method. Herein, we
extend upon such a multimer embedding approach to enable energy corrections for
trimer interactions and the calculation of harmonic vibrational properties up
to the dimer level. We evaluate this approach for the X23 benchmark set of
molecular crystals by approximating a periodic hybrid density functional
(PBE0+MBD) by embedding multimers into less expensive calculations using a
generalized-gradient approximation (GGA) functional (PBE+MBD). We show that
trimer interactions are crucial for accurately approximating lattice energies
within 1 kJ/mol and might also be needed for further improvement of lattice
constants and hence cell volumes. Finally, vibrational properties are already
very well captured at the monomer and dimer level, making it possible to
approximate vibrational free energies at room temperature within 1 kJ/mol
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