Ab initio coupled-cluster and multi-reference configuration interaction studies of the low-lying electronic states of 1,2,3,4-cyclobutanetetraone
In this paper, the four, closely spaced, lowest energy electronic states of the challenging, D 4h -symmetric, 1,2,3,4-cyclobutanetetraone (C 4 O 4 ) molecule have been investigated using high-level ab initio methods. The calculated states include the closed-shell singlet 8π( 1 A 1g ) state, the singlet 10π( 1 A 1g ) state, in which the π-type lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of the 8π( 1 A 1g ) reference is doubly occupied and the σ-type highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) is empty, and the open-shell singlet and triplet states, designated as 9π( 1 B 2u ) and 9π( 3 B 2u ), respectively, originating from single occupancy of the HOMO and LUMO. Our focus is on single-reference coupled-cluster (CC) approaches capable of handling electronic near-degeneracies in diradicals, especially the completely renormalised CR-CC(2,3) and active-space CCSDt methods, along with their CCSD and EOMCCSD counterparts. The internally contracted multi-reference configuration interaction calculations with a quasi-degenerate Davidson correction are performed as well. Our computations demonstrate that the state ordering is 9π( 3 B 2u ) < 8π( 1 A 1g ) < 9π( 1 B 2u ) < 10π( 1 A 1g ) and that the 8π( 1 A 1g ) - 9π( 3 B 2u ) gap is in the 7–11 kJ/mol range, in reasonable agreement with the negative ion photoelectron spectroscopy measurements, which give 6.27 ± 0.5 kJ/mol. Finally, in addition to the theory level used, geometry relaxation and basis set play a significant role in determining the state ordering and energy spacings. In particular, it is unsafe to use lower level, non-CC geometries and smaller basis sets.