The Chronus Quantum (ChronusQ) Software Package

The Chronus Quantum (ChronusQ) software package is an open source (under the GNU General Public License v2) software infrastructure which targets the solution of challenging problems that arise in ab initio electronic structure theory. Special emphasis is placed on the consistent treatment of time dependence and spin in the electronic wave function, as well as the inclusion of relativistic effects in said treatments. In addition, ChronusQ provides support for the inclusion of uniform finite magnetic fields as external perturbations through the use of gauge-including atomic orbitals (GIAO). ChronusQ is a parallel electronic structure code written in modern C++ which utilizes both message passing (MPI) and shared memory (OpenMP) parallelism. In addition to the examination of the current state of code base itself, a discussion regarding ongoing developments and developer contributions will also be provided.Comment: 43 pages, 2 figure

Imaging ultrafast excited state pathways in transition metal complexes by X-ray transient absorption and scattering using X-ray free electron laser source

This report will describe our recent studies of transition metal complex structural dynamics on the fs and ps time scales using an X-ray free electron laser source, Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). Ultrafast XANES spectra at the Ni K-edge of nickel(II) tetramesitylporphyrin (NiTMP) were successfully measured for optically excited state at a timescale from 100 fs to 50 ps, providing insight into its sub-ps electronic and structural relaxation processes. Importantly, a transient reduced state Ni(I) (π, 3d(x2−y2)) electronic state is captured through the interpretation of a short-lived excited state absorption on the low-energy shoulder of the edge, which is aided by the computation of X-ray transitions for postulated excited electronic states. The observed and computed inner shell to valence orbital transition energies demonstrate and quantify the influence of electronic configuration on specific metal orbital energies. A strong influence of the valence orbital occupation on the inner shell orbital energies indicates that one should not use the transition energy from 1s to other orbitals to draw conclusions about the d-orbital energies. For photocatalysis, a transient electronic configuration could influence d-orbital energies up to a few eV and any attempt to steer the reaction pathway should account for this to ensure that external energies can be used optimally in driving desirable processes. NiTMP structural evolution and the influence of the porphyrin macrocycle conformation on relaxation kinetics can be likewise inferred from this study

Ultrafast Excited State Relaxation of a Metalloporphyrin Revealed by Femtosecond X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy

Photoexcited Nickel­(II) tetramesitylporphyrin (NiTMP), like many open-shell metalloporphyrins, relaxes rapidly through multiple electronic states following an initial porphyrin-based excitation, some involving metal centered electronic configuration changes that could be harnessed catalytically before excited state relaxation. While a NiTMP excited state present at 100 ps was previously identified by X-ray transient absorption (XTA) spectroscopy at a synchrotron source as a relaxed (d,d) state, the lowest energy excited state (<i>J. Am. Chem. Soc.</i>, <b>2007</b>, <i>129</i>, 9616 and <i>Chem. Sci.</i>, <b>2010</b>, <i>1</i>, 642), structural dynamics before thermalization were not resolved due to the ∼100 ps duration of the available X-ray probe pulse. Using the femtosecond (fs) X-ray pulses of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the Ni center electronic configuration from the initial excited state to the relaxed (d,d) state has been obtained via ultrafast Ni K-edge XANES (X-ray absorption near edge structure) on a time scale from hundreds of femtoseconds to 100 ps. This enabled the identification of a short-lived Ni­(I) species aided by time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) methods. Computed electronic and nuclear structure for critical excited electronic states in the relaxation pathway characterize the dependence of the complex’s geometry on the electron occupation of the 3d orbitals. Calculated XANES transitions for these excited states assign a short-lived transient signal to the spectroscopic signature of the Ni­(I) species, resulting from intramolecular charge transfer on a time scale that has eluded previous synchrotron studies. These combined results enable us to examine the excited state structural dynamics of NiTMP prior to thermal relaxation and to capture intermediates of potential photocatalytic significance

The consequences of improperly describing oscillator strengths beyond the electric dipole approximation

The interaction between a quantum mechanical system and plane wave light is usually modeled within the electric dipole approximation. This assumes that the intensity of the incident field is constant over the length of the system and transition probabilities are described in terms of the electric dipole transition moment. For short wavelength spectroscopies, such as X-ray absorption, the electric dipole approximation often breaks down. Higher order multipoles are then included to describe transition probabilities. The square of the magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole are often included, but this results in an origin-dependent expression for the oscillator strength. The oscillator strength can be made origin-independent if all terms through the same order in the wave vector are retained. We will show the consequences and potential pitfalls of using either of these two expressions. It is shown that the origin-dependent expression may violate the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn sum rule and the origin-independent expression can result in negative transition probabilities

Calibration of Energy-Specific TDDFT for Modeling K‑edge XAS Spectra of Light Elements

X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) has become a powerful technique in chemical physics, because of advances in synchrotron technology that have greatly improved its temporal and spectroscopic resolution. Our recent work on energy-specific time-dependent density functional theory (ES-TDDFT) allows for the direct calculation of excitation energies in any region of the absorption spectrum, from UV-vis to X-ray. However, the ability of different density functional theories to model X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) of light elements has not yet been verified for ES-TDDFT. This work is a calibration of the ability of existing DFT kernels and basis sets to reproduce experimental K-edge excitation energies. Results were compared against 30 different transitions from gas-phase experiments. We focus on six commonly used density functionals (BHandHLYP, B3LYP, PBE1PBE, BP86, HSE06, LC-ωPBE) and various triple-ζ basis sets. The effects of core and diffuse functions are also investigated

Energy-Specific Equation-of-Motion Coupled-Cluster Methods for High-Energy Excited States: Application to <i>K</i>‑edge X‑ray Absorption Spectroscopy

Single-reference techniques based on coupled-cluster (CC) theory, in the forms of linear response (LR) or equation of motion (EOM), are highly accurate and widely used approaches for modeling valence absorption spectra. Unfortunately, these equations with singles and doubles (LR-CCSD and EOM-CCSD) scale as O(N6), which may be prohibitively expensive for the study of high-energy excited states using a conventional eigensolver. In this paper, we present an energy-specific non-Hermitian eigensolver that is able to obtain high-energy excited states (e.g., XAS <i>K</i>-edge spectrum) at low computational cost. In addition, we also introduce an improved trial vector for iteratively solving the EOM-CCSD equation with a focus on high-energy eigenstates. The energy-specific EOM-CCSD approach and its low-scaling alternatives are applied to calculations of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur <i>K</i>-edge excitations. The results are compared to other implementations of CCSD for excited states, energy-specific linear response time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), and experimental results with multiple statistical metrics are presented and evaluated