Search NASA⌕ Search

Engineering topics

List, Nanna Holmgaard

Publications and source records attributed to List, Nanna Holmgaard.

Harmonic Infrared and Raman Spectra in Molecular Environments Using the Polarizable Embedding Model

We present a fully analytic approach to calculate infrared (IR) and Raman spectra of molecules embedded in complex molecular environments modeled using the fragment-based polarizable embedding (PE) model. We provide the theory for the calculation of analytic second-order geometric derivatives of molecular energies and first-order geometric derivatives of electric dipole moments and dipole–dipole polarizabilities within the PE model. The derivatives are implemented using a general open-ended response theory framework, thus allowing for an extension to higher-order derivatives. The embedding-potential parameters used to describe the environment in the PE model are derived through first-principles calculations, thus allowing a wide variety of systems to be modeled, including solvents, proteins, and other large and complex molecular environments. Here, we present proof-of-principle calculations of IR and Raman spectra of acetone in different solvents. This work is an important step toward calculating accurate vibrational spectra of molecules embedded in realistic environments.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Beyond the electric-dipole approximation in simulations of x-ray absorption spectroscopy: Lessons from relativistic theory

Herein we present three schemes to go beyond the electric-dipole approximation in x-ray absorption spectroscopy calculations within a four-component relativistic framework. The first is based on the full semi-classical light–matter interaction operator and the two others on a truncated interaction within the Coulomb gauge (velocity representation) and multipolar gauge (length representation). We generalize the derivation of the multipolar gauge to an arbitrary expansion point and show that the potentials corresponding to different expansion points are related by a gauge transformation, provided that the expansion is not truncated. This suggests that the observed gauge-origin dependence in the multipolar gauge is more than just a finite-basis set effect. The simplicity of the relativistic formalism enables arbitrary-order implementations of the truncated interactions, with and without rotational averaging, allowing us to test their convergence behavior numerically by comparison to the full formulation. We confirm the observation that the oscillator strength of the electric-dipole allowed ligand K -edge transition of TiCl 4 , when calculated to the second order in the wave vector, becomes negative but also show that inclusion of higher-order contributions allows convergence to the result obtained using the full light–matter interaction. However, at higher energies, the slow convergence of such expansions becomes dramatic and renders such approaches at best impractical. When going beyond the electric-dipole approximation, we therefore recommend the use of the full light–matter interaction.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

VeloxChem: A Python-driven density-functional theory program for spectroscopy simulations in high-performance computing environments

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.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗