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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Light-induced electron dynamics of molecules in cavities: comparison of model Hamiltonians

The rapidly expanding field of polaritonic chemistry requires accurate theoretical simulations to understand new phenomena at the atomic scale. Computing the optoelectronic properties of molecules using established electronic structure methods is a careful balance of accuracy and computational expense, and expanding these methods to quantum electrodynamics to describe coupled cavity-molecule systems is an active topic of development. Key to these methods are the Hamiltonian operators representing the photon cavity modes. The recently introduced quantum electrodynamics time-dependent configuration interaction (QED-TDCI) method allows for the combination of electron dynamics simulations with quantum electrodynamics, enabling the simulation of time-dependent optoelectronic properties of cavity-molecule systems. Using this method, a comparison of two many-state QED Hamiltonians—the Pauli-Fierz and quantum Rabi model Hamiltonians—is presented, with a particular focus on time-dependent properties in applied electric fields.

Peyton, Benjamin G. (ORCID:0000000163190751)↗
DOE OSTI2010

Active-space completely-renormalized equation-of-motion coupled-cluster formalism: Excited-state studies of green fluorescent protein, free-base porphyrin, and oligoporphyrin dimer

The development of efficient parallel implementations of electronic structure methods enables not only the study of excited states of large molecular systems but also a unique opportunity to assess the role of various correlation effects in describing excitation energies for systems composed of hundreds of electrons. In this article, we discuss the impact of triply excited configurations in Equation-of-Motion Coupled Cluster (EOMCC) formalism. As a benchmark system we chose the fused porphyrin dimer, which is described by the basis set composed of 942 functions and where 270 electrons were correlated in the EOMCC calculations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2015

Second derivatives for approximate spin projection methods

The use of broken-symmetry electronic structure methods is required in order to obtain correct behavior of electronically strained open-shell systems, such as transition states, biradicals, and transition metals. This approach often has issues with spin contamination, which can lead to significant errors in predicted energies, geometries, and properties. Approximate projection schemes are able to correct for spin contamination and can often yield improved results. To fully make use of these methods and to carry out exploration of the potential energy surface, it is desirable to develop an efficient second energy derivative theory. In this paper, we formulate the analytical second derivatives for the Yamaguchi approximate projection scheme, building on recent work that has yielded an efficient implementation of the analytical first derivatives.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2016

An improved quasi-diabatic representation of the 1, 2, 3 1 A coupled adiabatic potential energy surfaces of phenol in the full 33 internal coordinates

In a previous project we constructed a quasi-diabatic representation, H d , of the 1, 2, 3 1 A adiabatic states of phenol from high level multireference single and double excitation configuration interaction electronic structure data, energies, energy gradients, and derivative couplings. That H d accurately describes surface minima, saddle points, and also regions of strong nonadiabatic interactions, reproducing the locus of conical intersection seams and the coordinate dependence of the derivative couplings. The present work determines the accuracy of H d for describing phenol photodissociation. Additionally, we demonstrate that a modest energetic shift of two diabats yields a quantifiably more accurate H d compared with experimental energetics. The analysis shows that in favorable circumstances it is possible to use single point energies obtained from the most reliable electronic structure methods available, including methods for which the energy gradients and derivative couplings are not available, to improve the quality of a global representation of several coupled potential energy surfaces. Our data indicate an alternative interpretation of kinetic energy release measurements near λ phot ~ 248 nm.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2014

Dramatic changes in electronic structure revealed by fractionally charged nuclei

Discontinuous changes in the electronic structure upon infinitesimal changes to the Hamiltonian are demonstrated. These are revealed in one and two electron molecular systems by full configuration interaction (FCI) calculations when the realm of the nuclear charge is extended to be fractional. FCI electron densities in these systems show dramatic changes in real space and illustrate the transfer, hopping, and removal of electrons. This is due to the particle nature of electrons seen in stretched systems and is a manifestation of an energy derivative discontinuity at constant number of electrons. Dramatic errors of density functional theory densities are seen in real space as this physics is missing from currently used approximations. The movements of electrons in these simple systems encapsulate those in real physical processes, from chemical reactions to electron transport and pose a great challenge for the development of new electronic structure methods.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Relativistic coupled‐cluster and equation‐of‐motion coupled‐cluster methods

Abstract The development of relativistic coupled‐cluster (CC) and equation‐of‐motion coupled‐cluster (EOM‐CC) methods is reviewed. An emphasis is placed on recent efforts to improve the computational efficiency of CC and EOM‐CC calculations with non‐perturbative treatments of spin‐orbit coupling (SO‐CC and EOM‐CC) by partially recovering spin symmetry in the formulations. Example calculations of electronic ground state as well as valence‐excited and core‐excited states for molecules containing heavy elements are presented to demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the SO‐CC and EOM‐CC methods. Future directions for the development of the SO‐CC and EOM‐CC methods are also discussed. This article is categorized under: Electronic Structure Theory > Ab Initio Electronic Structure Methods

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2015

An auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo study of the chromium dimer

The chromium dimer (Cr{sub 2}) presents an outstanding challenge for many-body electronic structure methods. Its complicated nature of binding, with a formal sextuple bond and an unusual potential energy curve (PEC), is emblematic of the competing tendencies and delicate balance found in many strongly correlated materials. We present an accurate calculation of the PEC and ground state properties of Cr{sub 2}, using the auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) method. Unconstrained, exact AFQMC calculations are first carried out for a medium-sized but realistic basis set. Elimination of the remaining finite-basis errors and extrapolation to the complete basis set limit are then achieved with a combination of phaseless and exact AFQMC calculations. Final results for the PEC and spectroscopic constants are in excellent agreement with experiment.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2016

Surface hopping investigation of the relaxation dynamics in radical cations

Ionization processes can lead to the formation of radical cations with population in several ionic states. In this study, we examine the dynamics of three radical cations starting from an excited ionic state using trajectory surface hopping dynamics in combination with multiconfigurational electronic structure methods. The efficiency of relaxation to the ground state is examined in an effort to understand better whether fragmentation of cations is likely to occur directly on excited states or after relaxation to the ground state. The results on cyclohexadiene, hexatriene, and uracil indicate that relaxation to the ground ionic state is very fast in these systems, while fragmentation before relaxation is rare. Ultrafast relaxation is facilitated by the close proximity of electronic states and the presence of two- and three-state conical intersections. Examining the properties of the systems in the Franck-Condon region can give some insight into the subsequent dynamics.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2014

Thermally-assisted-occupation density functional theory with generalized-gradient approximations

We extend the recently proposed thermally-assisted-occupation density functional theory (TAO-DFT) [J.-D. Chai, J. Chem. Phys. 136, 154104 (2012)] to generalized-gradient approximation (GGA) exchange-correlation density functionals. Relative to our previous TAO-LDA (i.e., the local density approximation to TAO-DFT), the resulting TAO-GGAs are significantly superior for a wide range of applications, such as thermochemistry, kinetics, and reaction energies. For noncovalent interactions, TAO-GGAs with empirical dispersion corrections are shown to yield excellent performance. Due to their computational efficiency for systems with strong static correlation effects, TAO-LDA and TAO-GGAs are applied to study the electronic properties (e.g., the singlet-triplet energy gaps, vertical ionization potentials, vertical electron affinities, fundamental gaps, and symmetrized von Neumann entropy) of acenes with different number of linearly fused benzene rings (up to 100), which is very challenging for conventional electronic structure methods. The ground states of acenes are shown to be singlets for all the chain lengths studied here. With the increase of acene length, the singlet-triplet energy gaps, vertical ionization potentials, and fundamental gaps decrease monotonically, while the vertical electron affinities and symmetrized von Neumann entropy (i.e., a measure of polyradical character) increase monotonically.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

How Noninnocent Spectator Species Improve the Oxygen Reduction Activity of Single-Atom Catalysts: Microkinetic Models from First-Principles Calculations

Graphene-based single-atom catalysts are promising alternatives to platinum-based catalysts for fuel cell applications. Different transition metals have been screened using electronic structure methods by estimating onset potentials from the most endergonic elementary reaction step. Here, we calculate onset potentials for the oxygen reduction reaction on metal atoms embedded in N-substituted graphene di-vacancies by virtue of first-principles-informed microkinetic analysis. We find that for more oxophilic metals (Cr, Fe, Mn, and Ru), purely thermodynamic models systematically underestimate onset potentials. Furthermore, the oxophilic metals (Cr, Fe, Mn, and Ru) are oxidized under reaction conditions, leading to an increase in activity compared to their reduced state. Importantly, coadsorbed O m H n species actively participate in the reaction, which requires a dynamic treatment of spectator species. These findings highlight the limitations of thermodynamic analyses for electrocatalytic processes, which commonly assume the same oxidation state for each metal, and show that deviations between computational and experimental onset potentials cannot be solely attributed to the shortcomings of the electronic structure methods.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2019

The Poisson–Boltzmann model for implicit solvation of electrolyte solutions: Quantum chemical implementation and assessment via Sechenov coefficients

Here, we present the theory and implementation of a Poisson-Boltzmann implicit solvation model for electrolyte solutions. This model can be combined with arbitrary electronic structure methods that provide an accurate charge density of the solute. A hierarchy of approximations for this model includes a linear approximation for weak electrostatic potentials, finite size of the mobile electrolyte ions, and a Stern-layer correction. Recasting the Poisson-Boltzmann equations into Euler-Lagrange equations then significantly simplifies the derivation of the free energy of solvation for these approximate models. The parameters of the model are either fit directly to experimental observables-e.g., the finite ion size-or optimized for agreement with experimental results. Experimental data for this optimization are available in the form of Sechenov coefficients that describe the linear dependence of the salting-out effect of solutes with respect to the electrolyte concentration. In the final part, we rationalize the qualitative disagreement of the finite ion size modification to the Poisson-Boltzmann model with experimental observations by taking into account the electrolyte concentration dependence of the Stern layer. A route toward a revised model that captures the experimental observations while including the finite ion size effects is then outlined. This implementation paves the way for the study of electrochemical and electrocatalytic processes of molecules and cluster models with accurate electronic structure methods.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

Quantum Monte Carlo benchmarking of large noncovalent complexes in the L7 benchmark set

We have used diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) to perform calculations on the L7 benchmark set. DMC is a stochastic numerical integration scheme in real-space and part of a larger set of quantum Monte Carlo methods. The L7 set was designed to test the ability of electronic structure methods to include dispersive interactions. While the agreement between DMC and quantum-chemical state-of-the-art methods is excellent for some of the structures, there are significant differences in others. In contrast to wavefunction-based quantum chemical methods, DMC is a first-principle many-body method with the many-body wavefunction evolving in real space. It includes explicitly all electron–electron interactions and is relatively insensitive to the size of the basis set.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2013

The dissociative chemisorption of methane on Ni(100) and Ni(111): Classical and quantum studies based on the reaction path Hamiltonian

Electronic structure methods based on density functional theory are used to construct a reaction path Hamiltonian for CH{sub 4} dissociation on the Ni(100) and Ni(111) surfaces. Both quantum and quasi-classical trajectory approaches are used to compute dissociative sticking probabilities, including all molecular degrees of freedom and the effects of lattice motion. Both approaches show a large enhancement in sticking when the incident molecule is vibrationally excited, and both can reproduce the mode specificity observed in experiments. However, the quasi-classical calculations significantly overestimate the ground state dissociative sticking at all energies, and the magnitude of the enhancement in sticking with vibrational excitation is much smaller than that computed using the quantum approach or observed in the experiments. The origin of this behavior is an unphysical flow of zero point energy from the nine normal vibrational modes into the reaction coordinate, giving large values for reaction at energies below the activation energy. Perturbative assumptions made in the quantum studies are shown to be accurate at all energies studied.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2015

The finite difference method in electronic structure calculations

Since the development of quantum mechanics, we know the equations describing the behavior of atoms and electrons at the microscopic level. The Schroedinger equation is however too difficult to solve for more than a few particles because of the high dimensional space of the solution - 3N for N particles. So various simplified models have been developed. Furthermore, the first simplification usually introduced is the Born-Oppenhaimer approximation in which atomic nuclei are treated as classical particles surrounded by quantum electrons.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Distinguishing artificial and essential symmetry breaking in a single determinant: approach and application to the C 60 , C 36 , and C 20 fullerenes

We present a thorough analysis of symmetry breaking observed in Hartree–Fock (HF) solutions of the C 60 , C 36 , and C 20 fullerenes in order to characterize the nature of electron correlation in them. Our analysis is based on (1) the critical regularization strength to restore symmetry breaking in the recently developed regularized orbital optimized second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (κ-OOMP2), (2) singlet–triplet gaps from various MP2 methods, and (3) natural orbital occupation numbers from restricted coupled-cluster with singles and doubles (RCCSD) and coupled-cluster valence bond with singles and doubles (CCVB-SD). Based on these three independent probes, we conclude that C 36 (D6h) exhibits genuine strong correlation and symmetry breaking whereas C 60 exhibits artificial HF symmetry breaking and is not strongly correlated. Investigating the critical regularization strength, we discuss strong correlation in C 20 at the Jahn–Teller distorted geometries (C 2h , D 2h , C i , and D 3h ) and the Ih geometry. Only C 20 (I h ) was found to be strongly correlated while others exhibit artificial HF symmetry breaking. This analysis highlights a useful feature of the recommended κ-OOMP2 method. It is an electronic structure method that describes dynamic correlation, and attenuates strong correlation in MP2 towards zero by regularization. Therefore, κ-OOMP2 will exhibit symmetry breaking in its reference determinant only when correlation is strong (i.e., essential symmetry breaking). Furthermore, artificial symmetry breaking (arising in HF due to neglect of dynamic correlation) thus appears to be removed in κ-OOMP2.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2017

GPU implementation of the linear scaling three dimensional fragment method for large scale electronic structure calculations

LS3DF, namely linear scaling three-dimensional fragment method, is an efficient linear scaling ab initio total energy electronic structure calculation code based on a divide-and-conquer strategy. In this paper, we present our GPU implementation of the LS3DF code. Our test results show that the GPU code can calculate systems with about ten thousand atoms fully self-consistently in the order of 10 min using thousands of computing nodes. This makes the electronic structure calculations of 10,000-atom nanosystems routine work. This speed is 4.5–6 times faster than the CPU calculations using the same number of nodes on the Titan machine in the Oak Ridge leadership computing facility (OLCF). Such speedup is achieved by (a) carefully re-designing of the computationally heavy kernels; (b) redesign of the communication pattern for heterogeneous supercomputers.

Computer Science↗