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International audience; Bent uranyl complexes can be formed with chloride ligands and 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) ligands bound to the equatorial and axial planes of the uranyl(VI) moiety, as revealed by the crystal structures, IR and Raman spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations. With the goal of probing the influence of chloride and phenanthroline coordination enforcing the bending on the absorption and emission spectra of this complex, spin-orbit time-dependent density functional theory calculations for the bare uranyl complexes as well as for the free UO2Cl2 subunit and the UO2Cl2(phen)2 ligand were performed. The emission spectra has been fully simulated by ab initio methods and compared to experimental photoluminescence spectra, recorded for the first time for UO2Cl2(phen)2. Notably, the bending of uranyl in UO2Cl2 and UO2Cl2(phen)2 triggers excitations of the uranyl bending mode, yielding a denser luminescence spectrum.

Bent uranyl complexes can be formed with chloride ligands and 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) ligands bound to the equatorial and axial planes of the uranyl(VI) moiety, as revealed by the crystal structures, IR and Raman spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations. With the goal of probing the influence of chloride and phenanthroline coordination enforcing the bending on the absorption and emission spectra of this complex, spin-orbit time-dependent density functional theory calculations for the bare uranyl complexes as well as for the free UO2Cl2 subunit and the UO2Cl2(phen)2 ligand we performed. The emission spectra has been fully simulated by ab initio methods and compared to experimental photoluminescence spectra, recorded for the first time for UO2Cl2(phen)2. Notably, the bending of uranyl in UO2Cl2 and UO2Cl2(phen)2 triggers vibronically induced excitations of the uranyl bending mode, yielding a denser spectrum.

Frozen density embedding (FDE) represents an embedding scheme in which environmental effects are included from first-principles calculations by considering the surrounding system explicitly by means of its electron density. In the present paper, we extend the full four-component relativistic Dirac-Kohn-Sham (DKS) method, as implemented in the BERTHA code, to include environmental and confinement effects with the FDE scheme (DKS-in-DFT FDE). The implementation, based on the auxiliary density fitting techniques, has been enormously facilitated by BERTHA's python API (PyBERTHA), which facilitates the interoperability with other FDE implementations available through the PyADF framework. The accuracy and numerical stability of this new implementation, also using different auxiliary fitting basis sets, has been demonstrated on the simple NH

In this work, we investigate the effects of the environment on the X-ray photoelectron spectra of hydrogen chloride and chloride ions adsorbed on ice surfaces, as well as of chloride ions in water droplets. In our approach, we combine a density functional theory (DFT) description of the ice surface with that of halogen species using the recently developed relativistic core-valence separation equation of motion coupled cluster (CVS-EOM-IP-CCSD)

In this work we investigate the effects of the environment on the X-ray photoelectron spectra of hydrogen chloride and the chloride ions adsorbed on ice surfaces, as well as of chloride ions in water droplets. In our approach, we combine a density functional theory (DFT) description of the ice surface with that of the halogen species with the recently developed relativistic core-valence separation equation of motion coupled cluster (CVS-EOM-IP-CCSD) via the frozen density embedding formalism (FDE), to determine the K and L$_{1,2,3}$ edges of chlorine. Our calculations, which incorporate temperature effects through snapshots from classical molecular dynamics simulations, are shown to reproduce experimental trends in the change of the core binding energies for Cl$^-$ upon moving from a liquid (water droplets) to an interfacial (ice quasi-liquid layer) environment. Our simulations yield water valence band binding energies in good agreement with experiment, and that vary little between the droplets and the ice surface. For the halide core binding energies there is an overall trend of overestimating experimental values, though good agreement between theory and experiment is found for Cl$^-$ in water droplets and on ice. For HCl on the other hand there are significant discrepancies between experimental and calculated core binding energies when we consider structural models which maintain the H-Cl bond more or less intact. An analysis of models that allow for pre-dissociated and dissociated structures suggests that experimentally observed chemical shifts in binding energies between Cl$^-$ snd HCl would reqire that H$^+$ (in the form of H$_3$O$^+$) and Cl$^-$ are separated by roughly 4-6 A., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2111.13909

We report an investigation of the low-lying excited states of the YbF molecule--a candidate molecule for experimental measurements of the electron electric dipole moment--with 2-component based multi-reference configuration interaction (MRCI), equation of motion coupled cluster (EOM-CCSD) and the extrapolated intermediate Hamiltonian Fock-space coupled cluster (XIHFS-CCSD). Specifically, we address the question of the nature of these low-lying states in terms of configurations containing filled or partially-filled Yb $4f$ shells. We show that while it does not appear possible to carry out calculations with both kinds of configurations contained in the same active space, reliable information can be extracted from different sectors of Fock space--that is, by performing electron attachment and detachment IHFS-CCSD and EOM-CCSD calculation on the closed-shell YbF$^+$ and YbF$^-$ species, respectively. From these we observe $\Omega = 1/2, 3/2$ states that arise from the $4f^{13}\sigma_{6s}^2$, $4f^{14}5d$/$6p$, and $4f^{13}5d\sigma_{6s}$ configurations appear in the same energy range around the ground-state equilibrium geometry and they are therefore able to interact. As these states are generated from different sectors of Fock space, they are almost orthogonal and provide complementary descriptions of parts of the excited state manifold. To obtain a comprehensive picture, we introduce a simple adiabatization model to extract energies of interacting $\Omega = 1/2, 3/2$ states that can be compared to experimental observations., Comment: 28+57 pages, 8+18 tables, 5+34 figures

International audience; In this paper, we report a reimplementation of the core algorithms of relativistic coupled cluster theory aimed at modern heterogeneous high-performance computational infrastructures. The code is designed for efficient parallel execution on many compute nodes with optional GPU coprocessing, accomplished via the new ExaTENSOR back end. The resulting ExaCorr module is primarily intended for calculations of molecules with one or more heavy elements, as relativistic effects on electronic structure are included from the outset. In the current work, we thereby focus on exact 2-component methods and demonstrate the accuracy and performance of the software. The module can be used as a stand-alone program requiring a set of molecular orbital coefficients as starting point, but is also interfaced to the DIRAC program that can be used to generate these. We therefore also briefly discuss an improvement of the parallel computing aspects of the relativistic self-consistent field algorithm of the DIRAC program.

The ability to predict the nature and amounts of plutonium emissions in industrial accidents, such as in solvent fires at PUREX nuclear reprocessing facilities, is a key concern of nuclear safety agencies. In accident conditions and in the presence of oxygen and water vapor, plutonium is expected to form the three major volatile species $\rm{PuO_2}$, $\rm{PuO_3}$, and $\rm{PuO_2(OH)_2}$, for which the thermodynamic data necessary for predictions (enthalpies of formation and heat capacities) presently show either large uncertainties or are lacking. In this work we aim to alleviate such shortcomings by obtaining the aforementioned data via relativistic correlated electronic structure calculations employing a two-step multi-reference approach (MS-CASPT2 with SO-RASSI), which is able to describe the multireference character of the ground-state wave functions of $\rm{PuO_3}$ and $\rm{PuO_2(OH)_2}$. We benchmark this approach by comparing it to relativistic coupled cluster calculations for the ground, ionized, and excited states of $\rm{PuO_2}$. Our results allow us to predict enthalpies of formation $\Delta_fH^\ominus(\rm{298.15~K})$ of $\rm{PuO_2}$, $\rm{PuO_3}$ and $\rm{PuO_2(OH)_2}$ to be $\rm{-449.5\pm8.8}$, $\rm{-553.2\pm27.5}$, and $\rm{-1012.6\pm38.1~kJ\;mol^{-1}}$, respectively, which confirm the predominance of plutonium dioxide, but also reveal the existence of plutonium trioxide in the gaseous phase under oxidative conditions, though the partial pressures of $\rm{PuO_3}$ and $\rm{PuO_2(OH)_2}$ are nonetheless always rather low under a wet atmosphere. Our calculations also permit us to reassess prior results for $\rm{PuO_2}$, establishing that the ground state of the $\rm{PuO_2}$ molecule is mainly of $\rm{^{5}\Sigma_{g}^+}$ character, as well as to confirm the experimental value for the adiabatic ionization energy of $\rm{PuO_2}$., Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, 9 tables and supplementary information

We report an implementation of the core-valence separation approach to the four-component relativistic Hamiltonian-based equation-of-motion coupled-cluster with singles and doubles theory (CVS-EOM-CCSD) for the calculation of relativistic core-ionization potentials and core-excitation energies. With this implementation, which is capable of exploiting double group symmetry, we investigate the effects of the different CVS-EOM-CCSD variants and the use of different Hamiltonians based on the exact two-component (X2C) framework on the energies of different core-ionized and -excited states in halogen- (CH3I, HX, and X-, X = Cl-At) and xenon-containing (Xe, XeF2) species. Our results show that the X2C molecular mean-field approach [Sikkema, J.; J. Chem. Phys. 2009, 131, 124116], based on four-component Dirac-Coulomb mean-field calculations (2DCM), is capable of providing core excitations and ionization energies that are nearly indistinguishable from the reference four-component energies for up to and including fifth-row elements. We observe that two-electron integrals over the small-component basis sets lead to non-negligible contributions to core binding energies for the K and L edges for atoms such as iodine or astatine and that the approach based on Dirac-Coulomb-Gaunt mean-field calculations (2DCGM) are significantly more accurate than X2C calculations for which screened two-electron spin-orbit interactions are included via atomic mean-field integrals.

International audience

DIRAC is a freely distributed general-purpose program system for 1-, 2- and 4-component relativistic molecular calculations at the level of Hartree--Fock, Kohn--Sham (including range-separated theory), multiconfigurational self-consistent-field, multireference configuration interaction, coupled cluster and electron propagator theory. At the self-consistent-field level a highly original scheme, based on quaternion algebra, is implemented for the treatment of both spatial and time reversal symmetry. DIRAC features a very general module for the calculation of molecular properties that to a large extent may be defined by the user and further analyzed through a powerful visualization module. It allows the inclusion of environmental effects through three different classes of increasingly sophisticated embedding approaches: the implicit solvation polarizable continuum model, the explicit polarizable embedding, and frozen density embedding models. DIRAC was one of the earliest codes for relativistic molecular calculations and remains a reference in its field., The following article has been submitted to The Journal of Chemical Physics. After it is published, it will be found at https://aip.scitation.org/toc/jcp/current

We investigate the ability of mechanical and electronic density functional theory‐based embedding approaches to describe the solvent effects on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) shielding constants of the 95Mo nucleus in the molybdate ion in aqueous solution. From the description obtained from calculations with two‐ and four‐component relativistic Hamiltonians, we find that, for such systems, spin‐orbit coupling effects are clearly important for absolute shielding values, but for relative quantities, a scalar relativistic treatment provides sufficient estimation of the solvent effects. We find that the electronic contributions to the solvent effects are relatively modest yet decisive to provide a more accurate magnetic response of the system when compared to reference supermolecular calculations. We analyze the errors in the embedding calculations by statistical methods, as well as through a real‐space representation of NMR shielding densities, which are shown to provide a clear picture of the physical processes at play.

A compreensão da natureza das propriedades de átomos, moléculas e sistemas mais complexos está diretamente relacionada com a distribuição e o comportamento das partículas microscópicas que os constitui. Diversas evidências experimentais sugeriram que a estrutura de átomos e moléculas não poderiam ser explicadas por princípios baseados na mecânica clássica. Experimentos, tais como: a radiação do corpo negro, capacidade calorífica e espectros atômicos e moleculares, sugeriam que os processos de absorção ou emissão de energia só poderiam ser explicados admitindo-se que a energia envolvida nesses processos seria quantizada e não contínua, como prevê a mecânica clássica. A nova mecânica criada para conciliar os aspectos observados com a hipótese de quantizações de determinadas propriedades microscópicas foi denominada de Mecânica Quântica. Duas versões dessa nova mecânica foram formuladas pelos físicos Erwin Schrödinger e Werner Heisemberg, em trabalhos e métodos matemáticos diferentes, porém equivalentes. A teoria especifica quais são as leis que as partículas de qualquer sistema microscópico obedecem. Observa-se que há uma relação com a teoria de Newton para o movimento de sistemas macroscópicos (princípio da correspondência), sendo a teoria de Newton um caso particular (no limite macroscópico) das equações de Schrödinger, assim como a teoria da relatividade de Einstein é uma generalização que inclui a teoria de Newton como um caso especial, no limite de baixas velocidades. O modelo de Schrödinger está fundamentado em alguns postulados que são descritos a seguir.

International audience; A subsystem approach for obtaining electron binding energies in the valence region is presented and applied to the case of halide ions (X-; X= F − At) in water. This approach is based on electronic structure calculations combining the relativistic equation-of-motion coupled cluster method for electron detachment and density functional theory via the frozen density embedding approach, using structures from classical molecular dynamics with polarizable force fields for discrete systems (in our study, droplets containing the anion and 50 water molecules). Our results indicate that one can accurately capture both the large solvent effect observed for the halides and the splitting of their ionization signals due to the increasingly large spin-orbit coupling of the p3/2-p1/2 manifold across the series, at an affordable computational cost. Furthermore, owing to the quantum mechanical treatment of both solute and solvent electron binding energies of semiquantitative quality are also obtained for (bulk) water as by-products of the calculations for the halogens (in droplets).

We report in this paper an implementation of 4-component relativistic Hamiltonian based Equation-of-Motion Coupled-Cluster with singles and doubles (EOM-CCSD) theory for the calculation of ionization potential (IP), electron affinity (EA) and excitation energy (EE). In this work we utilize previously developed double group symmetry-based generalized tensor contraction scheme, and also extend it in order to carry out tensor contractions involving non-totally symmetric and odd-ranked tensors. Several approximated spin-free and two-component Hamiltonians can also be accessed in this implementation. We have applied this method to the halogen monoxide (XO, X= Cl, Br, I, At, Ts) species, in order to assess the quality of a few other recent EOMCC implementations, where spin-orbit coupling contribution has been approximated in different degree. Besides, we also have studied various excited states of CH$_2$IBr, CH$_2$I$_2$ and I$_2^-$(as well as single electron attachment and detachment electronic states of the same species) where comparison has been made with a closely related multi-reference coupled-cluster method, namely Intermediate Hamiltonian Fock Space Coupled-Cluster singles and doubles (IHFS-CCSD) theory., Comment: improved formatting, added standard deviation for comparisons between eom-ee and fscc(1h1p)

International audience; We report an implementation of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) shielding (σ), isotope-independent indirect spin-spin coupling (K) and the magnetizability (χ) tensors in the frozen density embedding (FDE) scheme using the four-component (4c) relativistic Dirac--Coulomb (DC) Hamiltonian and the non-collinear spin density functional theory (SDFT). The formalism takes into account the magnetic balance between the large and the small components of molecular spinors and assures the gauge-origin independence of NMR shielding and magnetizability results. This implementation has been applied to hydrogen-bonded HXH⋯OH2 complexes (X = Se, Te, Po) and compared with the supermolecular calculations and with the approach based on the integration of the magnetically induced current density vector. A comparison with the approximate Zeroth-Order Regular Approximation (ZORA) Hamiltonian indicates non-negligible differences in σ and K in the HPoH⋯OH2 complex, and calls for a thourough comparison of ZORA and DC in the description of environment effects on NMR parameters for molecular systems with heavy elements.

Actinide-containing complexes present formidable challenges for electronic structure methods due to the large number of degenerate or quasi-degenerate electronic states arising from partially occupied 5f and 6d shells. Conventional multi-reference methods can treat active spaces that are often at the upper limit of what is required for a proper treatment of species with complex electronic structures, leaving no room for verifying their suitability. In this work we address the issue of properly defining the active spaces in such calculations, and introduce a protocol to determine optimal active spaces based on the use of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group algorithm and concepts of quantum information theory. We apply the protocol to elucidate the electronic structure and bonding mechanism of volatile plutonium oxides (PuO

Actinide-containing complexes present formidable challenges for electronic structure methods due to the large number of degenerate or quasi-degenerate electronic states arising from partially occupied 5f and 6d shells. Conventional multi-reference methods can treat active spaces that are often at the upper limit of what is required for a proper treatment of species with complex electronic structures, leaving no room for verifying their suitability. In this work we address the issue of properly defining the active spaces in such calculations, and introduce a protocol to determine optimal active spaces based on the use of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group algorithm and concepts of quantum information theory. We apply the protocol to elucidate the electronic structure and bonding mechanism of volatile plutonium oxides (PuO$_3$ and PuO$_2$(OH)$_2$), species associated with nuclear safety issues for which little is known about the electronic structure and energetics. We show how, within a scalar relativistic framework, orbital-pair correlations can be used to guide the definition of optimal active spaces which provide an accurate description of static/non-dynamic electron correlation, as well as to analyse the chemical bonding beyond a simple orbital model. From this bonding analysis we are able to show that the addition of oxo- or hydroxo-groups to the plutonium dioxide species considerably changes the pi-bonding mechanism with respect to the bare triatomics, resulting in bent structures with considerable multi-reference character., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures

International audience; The properties of halides from the lightest, Fuoride (F-), to the heaviest, astatide (At-), have been studied in water using a polarizable force-field approach based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at the 10 ns scale. The selected force-field explicitly treats the cooperativity within the halide-water hydrogen bond networks. The force- eld parameters have been adjusted to ab initio data on anion/water clusters computed at the relativistic Möller-Plesset second-order perturbation theory level of theory. The anion static polarizabilities of the two heaviest halides, I- and At-, were computed in the gas phase using large and diffuse atomic basis sets, and taking into account both electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling within a four-component framework. Our MD simulation results show the solvation properties of I- and At- in aqueous phase to be very close. For instance, their first hydration shells are structured and encompass 9.2 and 9.1 water molecules at about 3.70 ± 0.05 Å, respectively. These values have to be compared to the F-, Cl-, and Br- ones, i.e., 6.3, 8.4, and 9.0 water molecules at 2.74, 3.38, and 3.55 Å, respectively. Moreover our computations predict the solvation free energy of At- in liquid water at ambient conditions to be 68 kcal mol-1, a value also close the I- one, about 70 kcal mol-1. In all, our simulation results for I- are in excellent agreement with the latest neutron- and X-ray diffraction studies. Those for the At- ion are predictive, as no theoretical or experimental data are available to date.

The relativistic double-zeta (dz) and triple-zeta (tz) basis sets for the 5d elements Hf-Hg have been revised for consistency with the recently optimized 4f basis sets. The new dz basis sets have 24 s functions instead of 22 s functions, and the new tz basis sets have 30 s functions instead of 29 s functions. New contraction patterns have been determined, including the 6p orbital.

The theoretical modeling of lanthanide and actinide complexes in condensed media is challenging for theoretical chemistry, due in part to the intrinsic general challenge of devising a reliable model of the species in such environments and the necessity of ‘chemical’ accuracy. This chapter discusses the requirements, challenges, and pitfalls associated with attempting to theoretically model molecular properties for such systems that can be directly compared to experimental data, such as valence excitation spectra, core-excitation spectra, thermodynamics of chemical reactions, and redox properties. Spin-orbit effects are in general important to account for in excited-states calculations and in chemical reactions involving trans-uranium actinides and in many cases also uranium complexes. The most rigorous framework to include spin-orbit interaction is to treat it a priori in a four- or two-component relativistic framework. The Ultraviolet–visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy of lanthanide and actinide elements directly reflects the electronic structure of the species involved.

International audience; The nature of chemical bonds in heavy main-group diatomics is discussed from the viewpoint of effective bond orders, which are computed from spin-orbit wave functions resulting from contracted spin-orbit configuration interaction calculations. The reliability of the relativistic correlated wave functions obtained in such two-step spin-orbit coupling frameworks is assessed by benchmark studies of the spectroscopic constants with respect to either experimental data, or state-of-the-art fully relativis-tic correlated calculations. The I2, At2 , IO+, and AtO+ species are considered, and differences and similarities between the astatine and iodine elements are highlighted. In particular, we demonstrate that spin-orbit coupling weakens the covalent character of the bond in At2 even more than electron correlation, making the consideration of spin-orbit coupling compulsory for discussing chemical bonding in heavy (6p) main group element systems.

In this work a scheme for constructing systematic sequences of relativistic SCF basis sets at a reasonable computational cost is presented and applied to atoms of the s- and p-block up to Xe. This scheme, which couples simplex optimization and the use of geometric series given by four-term polynomial expressions for the logarithm of the exponents, allows for the construction of basis sets that exhibit very regular patterns of convergence to the numerical reference values of atomic total energies, spinor energies and radial expectation values. This regularity, together with the broad range of basis set sizes presented, enables these sets to be used as building blocks for basis sets applicable in both routine and benchmark relativistic calculations on atomic and molecular systems. © Springer-Verlag 2006.

Alternatives based on polynomial expansions of gaussian basis set exponents are introduced and evaluated. The formulas presented here outperform methods based upon the even-tempered formula or combinations of it. They closely match the performance of other methods based upon larger polynomial expansions of the logarithm of the exponents using the same or one less parameter per orbital angular symmetry.

In this paper we review the basic techniques of performance analysis within the UNIX environment that are relevant in computational chemistry, with particular emphasis on the execution profile using the gprof tool. Two case studies (in ab initio and molecular dynamics calculations) are presented in order to illustrate how execution profiling can be used to effectively identify bottlenecks and to guide source code optimization. Using these profiling and optimization techniques it was possible to obtain significant speedups (of up to 30%) in both cases.

We present a study of the electronic structure of the [UO2](+), [UO2](2 +), [UO2](3 +), NUO, [NUO](+), [NUO](2 +), [NUN](-), NUN, and [NUN](+) molecules with the intermediate Hamiltonian Fock-space coupled cluster method. The accuracy of mean-field approaches based on the eXact-2-Component Hamiltonian to incorporate spin-orbit coupling and Gaunt interactions are compared to results obtained with the Dirac-Coulomb Hamiltonian. Furthermore, we assess the reliability of calculations employing approximate density functionals in describing electronic spectra and quantities useful in rationalizing Uranium (VI) species reactivity (hardness, electronegativity, and electrophilicity).

International audience; The electronic structure of the XO and XO+ (X = I, At) species, as well that of a AtO+–H2O complex have been investigated using relativistic wave-function theory and density functional theory (DFT)-based approximations (DFAs). The n-electron valence state perturbation method with the perturbative inclusion of spin–orbit coupling including spin–orbit polarization effects (SO-NEVPT2) was shown to yield transition energies within 0.1 eV of the reference four-component intermediate Fock-space coupled cluster (DC-IHFSCCSD) method at a significantly lower computational cost and can therefore be used as a benchmark to more approximate approaches in the case of larger molecular systems. These wavefunction calculations indicate that the ground state for the AtO+ and AtO+–H2O systems is the Ω = 0+ component of the 3Σ- LS state, which is quite well separated (by ∼0.5 eV) from the Ω = 1 components of the same state and from the Ω = 2 state related to the 1Δ LS state (by ∼1 eV). Time-dependent DFT calculations, on the other hand, place the Ω = 1 below the Ω = 0+ component with the spurious stabilization of the former increasing as one increases the amount of Hartree–Fock exchange in the DFAs, while those employing the Tamm–Dancoff approximation and DFAs not including Hartree–Fock exchange yield transition energies in good agreement with SO-NEVPT2 or DC-IHFSCCSD for the lower-lying states. These results indicate the ingredients necessary for devising a DFA-based computational protocol applicable to the study of the properties of large AtO+ clusters so that it may (at least) qualitatively reproduce reliable reference (SO-NEVPT2) calculations.

International audience; In this work we explore the use of frozen density embedding [Gomes et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2008, 10, 5353] as a way to construct models of increasing sophistication for describing the low-lying electronic absorption spectra of UO2(2+) in the Cs2UO2Cl4 crystal. We find that a relatively simple embedding model, in which all but the UO2(2+) unit are represented by an embedding potential, can already describe the main spectral features and the main environment effects can be attributed to the four chloride ions situated at the UO2(2+) equatorial plane. Contributions from species further away, albeit small, are found to be important for reaching a close agreement with experimentally observed quantities such as the excited states' relative positions. These findings suggest that such an embedding approach is a viable alternative to supermolecular calculations employing larger models of actinyl species in condensed phase. Nevertheless, we observe a slight red shift of the excitation energies calculated with our models compared to experimental results, and attribute this discrepancy to inaccuracies in the underlying structural parameters.

Building on the framework recently reported for determining general response properties for frozen-density embedding [S. Höfener, A. S. P. Gomes, and L. Visscher, J. Chem. Phys. 136, 044104 (2012)]10.1063/1.3675845, in this work we report a first implementation of an embedded coupled-cluster in density-functional theory (CC-in-DFT) scheme for electronic excitations, where only the response of the active subsystem is taken into account. The formalism is applied to the calculation of coupled-cluster excitation energies of water and uracil in aqueous solution. We find that the CC-in-DFT results are in good agreement with reference calculations and experimental results. The accuracy of calculations is mainly sensitive to factors influencing the correlation treatment (basis set quality, truncation of the cluster operator) and to the embedding treatment of the ground-state (choice of density functionals). This allows for efficient approximations at the excited state calculation step without compromising the accuracy. This approximate scheme makes it possible to use a first principles approach to investigate environment effects with specific interactions at coupled-cluster level of theory at a cost comparable to that of calculations of the individual subsystems in vacuum. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

In this article, we present a consistent derivation of a density functional theory (DFT) based embedding method which encompasses wave-function theory-in-DFT (WFT-in-DFT) and the DFT-based subsystem formulation of response theory (DFT-in-DFT) by Neugebauer [J. Neugebauer, J. Chem. Phys. 131, 084104 (2009)10.1063/1.3212883] as special cases. This formulation, which is based on the time-averaged quasi-energy formalism, makes use of the variation Lagrangian techniques to allow the use of non-variational (in particular: coupled cluster) wave-function-based methods. We show how, in the time-independent limit, we naturally obtain expressions for the ground-state DFT-in-DFT and WFT-in-DFT embedding via a local potential. We furthermore provide working equations for the special case in which coupled cluster theory is used to obtain the density and excitation energies of the active subsystem. A sample application is given to demonstrate the method. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.

International audience; Quantum chemistry has become an invaluable tool for studying the electronic excitation phenomena underlying many important chemical, biological, and technological processes. Here, we review quantum-chemical approaches for modeling such phenomena. In particular, embedding methods can be particularly useful for treating localized excitations in complex chemical systems. These split the total system into a number of interacting subsystems. The electronic excitations processes occurring in the subsystem of interest are then treated with high accuracy, while its environment is taken into account in a more approximate way. In this review, we use a formulation based on the formally exact frozen-density embedding theory as our starting point. This provides a common framework for discussing the different embedding approaches that are currently available. Moreover, it also forms the basis of emerging methods that allow for a seamless coupling of density-functional theory and wavefunction based approaches, both for ground and excited states. These provide new possibilities for studying electronic excitations in large systems with predictive quantum-chemical methods.

International audience; We report the synthesis and resolution of a series of new chiral "3 + 1" oxorhenium(V) complexes, designed for high-resolution laser spectroscopy experiments probing molecular parity-violation (PV) effects in the Re=O stretching mode frequency. These complexes display a particularly simple chemical structure, with the rhenium atom as the stereogenic center, and show large PV energy differences according to our calculations. They were obtained in the racemic and enantioenriched forms, in the latter case by using either semi-preparative chiral HPLC resolution or enantioselective synthesis. The vibrational transition frequency differences between the enantiomeric pairs due to PV have been calculated with two- and four-component relativistic Hamiltonians using Hartree-Fock (HF) and density functional theory (DFT). For three complexes, including one synthesized in enantioenriched form, our HF calculations predict frequency differences above the present resolution limit of 1 Hz. These results confirm the order of magnitude for the calculated HF PV vibrational frequency differences reported earlier for this class of compounds [P. Schwerdtfeger and R. Bast, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2004, 126, 1652]. However, at the DFT level the PV vibrational frequency differences are in some cases reduced by an order of magnitude, but are still within the sensitivity of 0.01 Hz, which is the anticipated sensitivity in a new proposed experiment. We therefore believe that the present study represents an important step towards the experimental observation of PV in molecular systems, and emphasizes the extreme sensitivity of the PV vibrational frequency difference to the chemical environment around the rhenium center.

International audience; The triiodide ion I(3)(-) exhibits a complex photodissociation behavior, the dynamics of which are not yet fully understood. As a first step toward determining the full potential energy surfaces of this species for subsequent simulations of its dissociation processes, we investigate the performance of different electronic structure methods [time-dependent density functional theory, complete active space perturbation theory to second order (CASPT2), Fock-space coupled cluster and multireference configuration interaction] in describing the ground and excited states of the triiodide ion along the symmetrical dissociation path. All methods apart from CASPT2 include scalar relativity and spin-orbit coupling in the orbital optimization, providing useful benchmark data for the more common two-step approaches in which spin-orbit coupling is introduced in the configuration interaction. Time-dependent density functional theory with the statistical averaging of model orbital potential functional is off the mark for this system. Another choice of functional may improve performance with respect to vertical excitation energies and spectroscopic constants, but all functionals are likely to face instability problems away from the equilibrium region. The Fock-space coupled cluster method was shown to perform clearly best in regions not too far from equilibrium but is plagued by convergence problems toward the dissociation limit due to intruder states. CASPT2 shows good performance at significantly lower computational cost, but is quite sensitive to symmetry breaking. We furthermore observe spikes in the CASPT2 potential curves away from equilibrium, signaling intruder state problems that we were unable to curb through the use of level shifts. Multireference configuration interaction is, in principle, a viable option, but its computational cost in the present case prohibits use other than for benchmarking purposes.

8 pages; International audience; In a recent investigation by some of us on the spectrum of the uranyl (UO22+) ion [Réal, F.; Vallet, V.; Marian, C.; Wahlgren, U. J. Chem. Phys. 2007, 126, 214302], a sizable difference between CASPT2 and linear response coupled cluster (LRCC) was observed both with and without the perturbative inclusion of spin-orbit coupling. This poses a serious question as to which of the two would be more reliable for investigating molecules containing actinides. In this paper we address this question by comparing CASPT2 and LRCC to a method known to accurately describe the spectra of actinide-containing molecules: the four-component intermediate Hamiltonian Fock-space coupled cluster (IHFSCC) method, where electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling are treated on an equal footing. Our results indicate that for UO22+ there is little difference between treatments of spin-orbit coupling, making electron correlation the main cause of discrepancies. We have found IHFSCC and LRCC to be the most alike in the overall description of excited states, even though individual LRCC energies are blue-shifted in comparison to IHFSCC due to the difference in the parametrization of the excited states' wave functions. CASPT2, on the other hand, shows good agreement with IHFSCC for individual frequencies but significantly less so for the spectrum as a whole, due to the difference in the degree of correlation recovered in both cases.

We present a simple and efficient embedding scheme for the wave-function based calculation of the energies of local excitations in large systems. By introducing an embedding potential obtained from density-functional theory (DFT) it is possible to describe the effect of an environment on local excitations of an embedded system in wave-function theory (WFT) calculations of the excitation energies. We outline the implementation of such a WFT-in-DFT embedding procedure employing the ADF, Dalton and DIRAC codes, where the embedded subsystem is treated with coupled cluster methods. We then evaluate this procedure in the calculation of the solvatochromic shift of acetone in water and of the f-f spectrum of NpO22+ embedded in a Cs2UO2Cl4 crystal and find that our scheme does effectively incorporate the environment effect in both cases. A particularly interesting finding is that with our embedding scheme we can model the equatorial Cl- ligands in NpO2Cl42- quite accurately, compared to a fully wavefunction-based calculation, and this opens up the possibility of modeling the interaction of different ligands to actinyl species with relatively high accuracy but at a much reduced computational cost.

Grid computing is a promising technology for computational chemistry, due to the large volume of calculations involved in appplications such as molecular modeling, thermochemistry and other types of systematic studies. Difficulties in using computational chemistry codes in grid environments arise, however, from the fact that the application software is complex, requiring substantial effort to be installed on different platforms. Morever, these codes depend upon task–dependent sets of data files to be present at the execution nodes. Aiming to improve the usability of different quantum chemistry codes in the distributed, heterogeneous environments found in computational grids, we describe a framework capable of handling the execution of different codes on different platforms. This framework can be divided into three independent parts, one dealing with the mapping of a calculation to a set of codes and the construction of execution environments, one dealing with the management of grid resources, and one that takes care of the heterogeneity of the environment. The suitability of this framework to tackle typical quantum chemistry calculations is discussed and illustrated by a model application.

In this work, we investigate the influence of correlating core electrons on the relativistic corrections to the equilibrium geometries, harmonic frequencies and dissociation energies of hydrogen astatide, using moderately large basis sets. Our results suggest that relativistic effects tend to increase bond length and decrease harmonic frequencies and dissociation energies, in line with previous studies involving valence correlation. In all cases the driving force to the relativistic effects is the spin-orbit coupling, with scalar effects acting cooperatively except for the bond lengths. Core correlation counteracts the relativistic increase of bond lengths, but not strongly enough to reverse any trends. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

International audience; In order to guide the experimental search for parity violation in molecular systems, in part motivated by the possible link to biomolecular homochirality, we present a detailed analysis in a relativistic framework of the mechanism behind the tiny energy difference between enantiomers induced by the weak force. A decomposition of the molecular expectation value into atomic contributions reveals that the effect can be thought of as arising from a specific mixing of valence s(1/2) and p(1/2) orbitals on a single center induced by a chiral molecular field. The intra-atomic nature of the effect is further illustrated by visualization of the electron chirality density and suggests that a simple model for parity violation in molecules may be constructed by combining pre-calculated atomic quantities with simple bonding models. A 2-component relativistic computational procedure is proposed which bridges the relativistic and non-relativistic approaches to the calculation of parity violation in chiral molecules and allows us to explore the single-center theorem in a variational setting.

International audience; The performance of the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) approach has been evaluated for the electronic spectrum of the UO(2)(2+), NUO(+) and NUN molecules. Different exchange-correlation functionals (LDA, PBE, BLYP, B3LYP, PBE0, M06, M06-L, M06-2X, CAM-B3LYP) and the SAOP model potential have been investigated, as has the relative importance of the adiabatic local density approximation (ALDA) to the exchange-correlation kernel. The vertical excitation energies have been compared with reference data obtained using accurate wave-function theory (WFT) methods.

National audience

In this thesis, we seek to obtain certain molecular properties for species containing heavy elements or presenting atmospheric interests. For this, we use techniques to characterize the core electrons, with ionization potentials (IP) or with excitation energies (EE), allowing for example to respectively interpret X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy(XPS) and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS). We also seek to characterize valence electrons through the polarizability, which is used for example to develop force fields. When we work with heavy elements or with core electrons, we must take relativistic effects into account. We therefore used the Dirac-Coulomb(-Gaunt) Hamiltonian. Furthermore, to compare our results with experiments, we need precise methods. Thus, we will work with the Coupled-Cluster (CC) method, and will use the Equation of Motion Coupled-Cluster (EOM-CC) method to obtain the IPs, EEs and electron affinities (EA). However, these two elements (4-component Hamiltonians and post-Hartree-Fock methods) imply considerable computational costs, requiring the resources of High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms.This thesis presents a study of the Core-Valence Separation (CVS) method, which will allow us to reach the properties of core electrons (IP and EE) with EOM-CC. We provide a detailed investigation of the performance of different Hamiltonians, in particular the exact two-component molecular mean field Hamiltonian. Second, we will focus on the perturbative approximations (Partioned and Many Body Perturbation Theory 2d order (MBPT (2)) to be applied to the EOM-CC matrix to limit computational costs, including for core processes. Finally, we present the work carried out in Exacorr, a new relativistic coupled cluster implementation for hybrid and massively parallel architectures. We will finish by outlining the formalism and working equations for the Linear Response Coupled-Cluster (LRCC) method, through which analytical (frequency-dependent) molecular polarizabilities can be obtained.; Dans cette thèse, nous cherchons à obtenir certaines propriétés moléculaires pour des espèces contenant des éléments lourds ou présentant des intérêts atmosphériques. Pour cela, nous utilisons des techniques permettant de caractériser les électrons de cœur, avec les potentiels d'ionisation (IP) ou avec les énergies d'excitation (EE), offrant la possibilité par exemple d'interpréter respectivement les expériences X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) et X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS).Nous cherchons également à caractériser les électrons de valence au travers de la polarisabilité qui est utilisée par exemple pour développer des champs de force. Quand nous travaillons avec des éléments lourds ou avec des électrons de cœur, il faut prendre en compte les effets relativistes. Nous avons donc employé l'hamiltonien de Dirac-Coulomb(-Gaunt). De plus, pour comparer nos résultats aux expériences, il nous faut des méthodes précises. Ainsi, nous travaillerons avec la méthode Coupled-Cluster (CC) et pour obtenir les (IP), les (EE) et également les affinités électroniques (EA), nous utiliserons " Equation of Motion Coupled-Cluster " (EOM-CC). Cependant, ces deux éléments (hamiltoniens à 4-composantes et méthodes post-Hartree-Fock) impliquent des coûts de calcul considérables, nécessitant les ressources de plateformes de " High Performance Computing " (HPC).Cette thèse se présentera donc selon les éléments décrits précédemment. Premièrement, nous étudierons la méthode Core-Valence Separation (CVS) qui nous permettra, à partir de EOM-CC, d'atteindre les propriétés des électrons de cœur (IP et EE). Comme ces électrons sont proches du noyau où les effets relativistes sont les plus importants, nous étudierons différents hamiltoniens, notamment "exact two-component molecular mean field Hamiltonian ". Deuxièmement, nous nous intéresserons aux approximations perturbatives (" Partioned " et " Many Body Perturbation Theory 2d order " (MBPT(2)) à appliquer à la matrice EOM-CC pour limiter les coûts computationnels.Enfin, nous présenterons des travaux réalisés sur Exacorr, une nouvelle implémentation de Coupled-Cluster relativiste pour les architectures hybrides et massivement parallèles., un nouveau module de parallélisation des calculs pour des architectures hybrides et massivement parallèles. Nous terminerons en décrivant le formalisme et les équations de travail de la méthode Linear Response Coupled-Cluster (LRCC), grâce à laquelle des polarisabilités moléculaires analytiques (dépendantes de la fréquence) peuvent être obtenues.