Theoretical study of stable negative ions of polar molecules: NaH−, LiH−, LiF−, BeO−

Molecular anions

The experimental and theoretical study of molecular anions has undergone explosive growth over the past 40 years. Advances in techniques used to generate anions in appreciable numbers as well as new ion-storage, ion-optics, and laser spectroscopic tools have been key on the experimental front. Theoretical developments on the electronic structure and molecular dynamics fronts now allow one to achieve higher accuracy and to study electronically metastable states, thus bringing theory in close collaboration with experiment in this field. In this article, many of the experimental and theoretical challenges specific to studying molecular anions are discussed. Results from many research groups on several classes of molecular anions are overviewed, and both literature citations and active (in online html and pdf versions) links to numerous contributing scientists' Web sites are provided. Specific focus is made on the following families of anions: dipole-bound, zwitterion-bound, double-Rydberg, multiply charged, metastable, cluster-based, and biological anions. In discussing each kind of anion, emphasis is placed on the structural, energetic, spectroscopic, and chemical-reactivity characteristics that make these anions novel, interesting, and important.

Equations of Motion Theory for Electron Affinities

The ab initio calculation of molecular electron affinities (EA) and ionization potentials (IP) is a difficult task because the energy of interest is a very small fraction of the total electronic energy of the parent species. For example, EAs typically lie in the 0.01-10 eV range, but the total electronic energy of even a small molecule, radical, or ion is usually several orders of magnitude larger. Moreover, the EA or IP is an intensive quantity but the total energy is an extensive quantity, so the difficulty in evaluating EAs and IPs to within a fixed specified (e.g., ±0.1 eV) accuracy becomes more and more difficult as the system's size and number of electrons grows. The situation becomes especially problematic when studying extended systems such as solids, polymers, or surfaces for which the EA or IP is an infinitesimal fraction of the total energy. EOM methods such as the author developed in the 1970s offer a route to calculating the intensive EAs and IPs directly as eigenvalues of a set of working equations. A history of the development of EOM theories as applied to EAs and IPs, their numerous practical implementations, and their relations to Greens function or propagator theories are given in this contribution. EOM methods based upon Møller-Plesset, multiconfiguration self-consistent field, and coupled-cluster reference wave functions are included in the discussion as is the application of EOM methods to metastable states of anions.

Nonrelativistic molecular quantum mechanics without approximations: Electron affinities of LiH and LiD

We took the complete nonrelativistic Hamiltonians for the LiH and LiH- systems, as well as their deuterated isotopomers, we separated the kinetic energy of the center of mass motion from the Hamiltonians, and with the use of the variational method we optimized the ground-state nonadiabatic wave functions for the systems expanding them in terms of n-particle explicitly correlated Gaussian functions. With 3600 functions in the expansions we obtained the lowest ever ground-state energies of LiH, LiD, LiH-, and LiD- and these values were used to determine LiH and LiD electrons affinities (EAs) yielding 0.330 30 and 0.327 13 eV, respectively. The present are the first high-accuracy ab initio quantum mechanical calculations of the LiH and LiD EAs that do not assume the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The obtained EAs fall within the uncertainty brackets of the experimental results.