Within the self-consistent field approximation, computationally tractable expressions for the isotropic second-order hyperpolarizability have been derived and implemented for the calculation of two-photon absorption cross sections. The novel tensor average formulation presented in this work allows for the evaluation of isotropic damped cubic response functions using only similar to 3.3% (one-photon off-resonance regions) and similar to 10% (one-photon resonance regions) of the number of auxiliary Fock matrices required when explicitly calculating all the needed individual tensor components. Numerical examples of the two-photon absorption cross section in the one-photon off-resonance and resonance regions are provided for alanine-tryptophan and 2,5-dibromo-1,4-bis(2-(4-diphenylaminophenyl)vinyl)-benzene. Furthermore, a benchmark set of 22 additional small- and medium-sized organic molecules is considered. In all these calculations, a quantitative assessment is made of the reduced and approximate forms of the cubic response function in the one-photon off-resonance regions and results demonstrate a relative error of less than similar to 5% when using the reduced expression as compared to the full form of the isotropic cubic response function.

The Dalton Project provides a uniform platform access to the underlying full-fledged quantum chemistry codes Dalton and LSDalton as well as the PyFraME package for automatized fragmentation and parameterization of complex molecular environments. The platform is written in Python and defines a means for library communication and interaction. Intermediate data such as integrals are exposed to the platform and made accessible to the user in the form of NumPy arrays, and the resulting data are extracted, analyzed, and visualized. Complex computational protocols that may, for instance, arise due to a need for environment fragmentation and configuration-space sampling of biochemical systems are readily assisted by the platform. The platform is designed to host additional software libraries and will serve as a hub for future modular software development efforts in the distributed Dalton community.

We review recent work on property decomposition techniques using quantum emical methods and discuss some topical applications in terms of antum mechanics-molecular mechanics calculations and the constructing properties of large molecules and clusters. Starting out from the -called LoProp decomposition scheme [Gagliardi et al., J. Chem. Phys., 04, 121, 4994] for extracting atomic and inter-atomic contributions to lecular properties we show how this method can be generalized to calized frequency-dependent polarizabilities, to localized perpolarizabilities and to localized dispersion coefficients. Some plications of the generalized decomposition technique are reviewed - lculations of frequency-dependent polarizabilities, Rayleigh attering of large clusters, and calculations of hyperpolarizabilities proteins.

An open-source program named VeloxChem has been developed for the calculation of electronic real and complex linear response functions at the levels of Hartree–Fock and Kohn–Sham density functional theories. With an object-oriented program structure written in a Python/C++ layered fashion, VeloxChem enables time-efficient prototyping of novel scientific approaches without sacrificing computational efficiency, so that molecular systems involving up to and beyond 500 second-row atoms (or some 10,000 contracted and in part diffuse Gaussian basis functions) can be routinely addressed. In addition, VeloxChem is equipped with a polarizable embedding scheme for the treatment of the classical electrostatic interactions with an environment that in turn is modeled by atomic site charges and polarizabilities. The underlying hybrid message passing interface (MPI)/open multiprocessing (OpenMP) parallelization scheme makes VeloxChem suitable for execution in high-performance computing cluster environments, showing even slightly beyond linear scaling for the Fock matrix construction with use of up to 16,384 central processing unit (CPU) cores. An efficient—with respect to convergence rate and overall computational cost—multifrequency/gradient complex linear response equation solver enables calculations not only of conventional spectra, such as visible/ultraviolet/X-ray electronic absorption and circular dichroism spectra, but also time-resolved linear response signals as due to ultra-short weak laser pulses. VeloxChem distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPLv2.1) license and made available for download from the homepage https://veloxchem.org. This article is categorized under: Software > Quantum Chemistry Electronic Structure Theory > Density Functional Theory Theoretical and Physical Chemistry > Spectroscopy.

In this paper, we discuss the impact of using a frequency-dependent embedding potential in quantum chemical embedding calculations of response properties. We show that the introduction of a frequency-dependent embedding potential leads to further model complications upon solving the central equations defining specific molecular properties. On the other hand, we also show from a numerical point of view that the consequences of using such a frequency-dependent embedding potential is almost negligible. Thus, for the kind of systems and processes studied in this paper the general recommendation is to use frequency-independent embedding potentials since this leads to less complicated model issues. However, larger effects are expected if the absorption bands of the environment are closer to that of the region treated using quantum mechanics.

We present a new way to compute the two-body contribution to the dispersion energy using ab initio theory. By combining the complex polarization propagator method and the LoProp transformation, local contributions to the Casimir-Polder interaction is obtained. The full dispersion energy in dimer systems consisting of pairs of molecules including H2, N2, CO, CH4, pyridine, and benzene is investigated, where anisotropic as well as isotropic models of dispersion are obtained using a decomposition scheme for the dipole-dipole polarizability. It is found that the local minima structure of the π-cloud stacking of the benzene dimer is underestimated by the total molecular dispersion, but is alleviated by the inclusion of atomic interactions via the decomposition scheme. The dispersion energy in the T-shaped benzene dimer system is greatly underestimated by all dispersion models, as compared to high-level quantum calculations. The generalization of the decomposition scheme to higher order multipole polarizability interactions, representing higher order dispersion coefficients, is briefly discussed. It is argued that the incorporation of atomic C6 coefficients in new atomic force fields may have important ramifications in molecular dynamics studies of biomolecular systems.

In this work, we apply quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) approach to predict core-electron binding energies and chemical shifts of polymers, obtainable via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), using polymethyl methacrylate as a demonstration example. The results indicate that standard parametrizations of the quantum part (basis sets, level of correlation) and the molecular mechanics parts (decomposed charges, polarizabilities, and capping technique) are sufficient for the QM/MM model to be predictive for XPS of polymers. It is found that the polymer environment produces contributions to the XPS binding energies that are close to monotonous with the number of monomer units, totally amounting to approximately an eV decrease in binding energies. In most of the cases, the order of the shifts is maintained, and even the relative size of the differential shifts is largely preserved. The coupling of the internal core-hole relaxation to the polymer environment is found to be weak in each case, amounting only to one or two tenths of an eV. The main polymeric effect is actually well estimated already at the frozen orbital level of theory, which in turn implies a substantial computational simplification. These conclusions are best represented by the cases where the ionized monomer and its immediate surrounding are treated quantum mechanically. If the QM region includes only a single monomer, a couple of anomalies are spotted, which are referred to the QM/MM interface itself and to the neglect of a possible charge transfer.

Core-valence double ionisation spectra of acetaldehyde (ethanal) are presented at photon energies above the carbon and oxygen 1s ionisation edges, measured by a versatile multi-electron coincidence spectroscopy technique. We use this molecule as a testbed for analyzing core-valence spectra by means of quantum chemical calculations of transition energies. These theoretical approaches range from two simple models, one based on orbital energies corrected by core valence interaction and one based on the equivalent core approximation, to a systematic series of quantum chemical electronic structure methods of increasing sophistication. The two simple models are found to provide a fast orbital interpretation of the spectra, in particular in the low energy parts, while the coverage of the full spectrum is best fulfilled by correlated models. CASPT2 is the most sophisticated model applied, but considering precision as well as computational costs, the single and double excitation configuration interaction model seems to provide the best option to analyze core-valence double hole spectra.

The application of localized hyperpolarizabilities to predict a total protein hyperpolarizability is presented for the first time, using rat-tail collagen as a demonstration example. We employ a model comprising the quadratic Applequist point-dipole approach, the so-called LoProp transformation, and a procedure with molecular fractionation using conjugate caps to determine the atomic and bond contributions to the net beta tensor of the collagen [(PPG)(10)](3) triple-helix. By using Tholes exponential damping modification to the dyadic tensor in the Applequist equations, a correct qualitative agreement with experiment is found. The intensity of the beta(HRS) signal and the depolarization ratios are best reproduced by decomposing the LoProp properties into the atomic positions and using Tholes exponential damping with the original damping parameter. Some ramifications of the model for general protein property optimization are briefly discussed.