One-Photon Absorption Properties from a Hybrid Polarizable Density Embedding/Complex Polarization Propagator Approach for Polarizable Solutions.

We present a formulation of the polarizable density embedding (PDE) method in combination with the complex polarization propagator (CPP) method for the calculation of absorption spectra of molecules in solutions. The method is particularly useful for the calculation of near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) spectra. We compare the performance of PDE-CPP with the previously formulated polarizable embedding (PE)-CPP model for the calculation of the NEXAFS spectra of adenine, formamide, glycine, and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in water at the carbon and nitrogen K-edges, as well as of formamide and glycine at the oxygen K-edge. In general, we find only minor differences between the performance of PDE and PE for the targeted parts of the spectra, except in the case of transitions involving Rydberg states, for which nonelectrostatic effects are found to be important.

Polarizable Density Embedding Coupled Cluster Method.

We present the theory and implementation of the polarizable density embedding (PDE) model in combination with coupled cluster (CC) theory (PDE-CC). This model has been implemented in the Dalton quantum chemistry program by adapting the CC code to the polarizable embedding library ( PElib). In the PDE-CC method, the smaller, but chemically important core region is described with a high-level CC method. The environment surrounding the core region can be separated into two levels of description: an inner and an outer region. The effect of the inner region on the core region is described by an embedding potential consisting of a set of fragment densities obtained from calculations on isolated fragments with a quantum-chemistry method such as Hartree-Fock (HF) or Kohn-Sham density functional theory (KS-DFT) and dressed with a set of atom-centered anisotropic dipole-dipole polarizabilities. The outer region consists of distributed atom-centered multipoles and polarizabilities, i.e., in the same way as in the polarizable embedding (PE) model. The PDE-CC method contains embedding potential operators that account for the electrostatic and polarization interactions between the core region and the environment, as well as for nonelectrostatic (also known as Pauli and exchange) repulsion. All environmental effects are included through one-electron operators and account very efficiently for the response of the environment due to the change in the electron density of the core region, e.g., upon an electronic transition.

Optimization and transferability of non-electrostatic repulsion in the polarizable density embedding model.

Embedding techniques in combination with response theory represent a successful approach to calculate molecular properties and excited states in large molecular systems such as solutions and proteins. Recently, the polarizable embedding model has been extended by introducing explicit electronic densities of the molecules in the nearest environment, resulting in the polarizable density embedding (PDE) model. This improvement provides a better description of the intermolecular interactions at short distances. However, the electronic densities of the environment molecules are calculated in isolation, which results in overestimation of the non-electrostatic repulsion, thereby requiring a scaling of this term. In this work, an optimal scaling factor for the non-electrostatic repulsion term is examined by comparing intermolecular interaction energies obtained with embedding techniques to reference interaction energies calculated on the basis of full quantum-mechanical calculations. The obtained optimal factors are used in PDE calculations of various ground- and excited-state properties of molecules embedded in solvents described as polarizable environments. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Polarizable Embedded RI-CC2 Method for Two-Photon Absorption Calculations.

We present a novel polarizable embedded resolution-of-identity coupled cluster singles and approximate doubles (PERI-CC2) method for calculation of two-photon absorption (TPA) spectra of large molecular systems. The method was benchmarked for three types of systems: a water-solvated molecule of formamide, a uracil molecule in aqueous solution, and a set of mutants of the channelrhodopsin (ChR) protein. The first test case shows that the PERI-CC2 method is in excellent agreement with the PE-CC2 method and in good agreement with the PE-CCSD method. The uracil test case indicates that the effects of hydrogen bonding on the TPA of a chromophore with the nearest environment is well-described with the PERI-CC2 method. Finally, the ChR calculation shows that the PERI-CC2 method is well-suited and efficient for calculations on proteins with medium-sized chromophores.

Experimental and computational study of solvent effects on one- and two-photon absorption spectra of chlorinated harmines.

A combined experimental and computational study of solvent effects on one- and two-photon absorption spectra of three chlorinated harmine derivatives is presented. The systems studied were protonated forms of 6-chloroharmine, 8-chloroharmine and 6,8-dichloroharmine in two solvents, acetonitrile and water. For the computations, polarizable embedding density functional and coupled cluster response theory methods were used. The computations were able to model the solvent-dependent experimental data well. These results demonstrate that reasonably sophisticated computational methods can be successfully applied to accurately study linear and nonlinear spectroscopic properties of comparatively large organic molecules in solution.