Nonempirical Calculations on Excited States: The Ethylene Molecule

A series of nonempirical calculations are reported on the excited states of the ethylene molecule using a recent minimum basis set LCAO MO SCF wavefunction. For the lowest excited singlet state of ethylene (^1B_(3u)) the coupling between the π electrons and σ electrons is significant: the excitation energy being decreased from 11.98 to 10.17 eV and the oscillator strength from 1.03 to 0.73. This coupling has little effect on the triplet state. In the next higher approximation (the random‐phase approximation) the excitation energy is further decreased to 9.44 eV and the transition moment to 0.51. With the use of accurate LCAO MO SCF wavefunctions, it is felt that the methods presented here will provide a basis for the theoretical interpretation of electronic spectra

Resolving a puzzling anomaly in the spin-coupled generalized valence bond description of benzene

In an earlier study of benzene, Small and Head-Gordon found that the spin-coupled generalized valence bond (SCGVB) wave function for the π system predicted a distorted (non-D6h) geometry, one with alternating CC bond lengths. However, the variations in the energy were very small and the predictions were made using a very small basis set (STO-3G). We re-examined this prediction using a much larger basis set (aug-cc-pVTZ) to determine the dependence of the energy of benzene on the distortion angle, ΔθCXC (ΔθCXC = 0° corresponds to the D6h structure). We also found a distorted geometry with the optimum ΔθCXC being 0.31° with an energy 0.040 kcal mol⁻¹ lower than that for the D6h structure. In the optimum geometry, adjacent CC bond lengths are 1.3861 Å and 1.4004 Å. Analysis of the SCGVB wave function led us to conclude that the cause of the unusual non-D6h geometry predicted by the SCGVB calculations seems to be a result of the interaction between the Kekulé and Dewar components of the full SCGVB wave function. The addition of doubly ionic configurations to the SCGVB wave function leads to the prediction of a D6h geometry for benzene and a dependence on ΔθCXC essentially the same as that predicted by the complete active space self-consistent field wave function

Computational Thermochemistry and Benchmarking of Reliable Methods

During the first and second years of the Computational Thermochemistry and Benchmarking of Reliable Methods project, we completed several studies using the parallel computing capabilities of the NWChem software and Molecular Science Computing Facility (MSCF), including large-scale density functional theory (DFT), second-order Moeller-Plesset (MP2) perturbation theory, and CCSD(T) calculations. During the third year, we continued to pursue the computational thermodynamic and benchmarking studies outlined in our proposal. With the issues affecting the robustness of the coupled cluster part of NWChem resolved, we pursued studies of the heats-of-formation of compounds containing 5 to 7 first- and/or second-row elements and approximately 10 to 14 hydrogens. The size of these systems, when combined with the large basis sets (cc-pVQZ and aug-cc-pVQZ) that are necessary for extrapolating to the complete basis set limit, creates a formidable computational challenge, for which NWChem on NWMPP1 is well suited