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This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchange-correlation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction and variational reduced density-matrix methods. Methods highlighted in Q-Chem 5 include a suite of tools for modeling core-level spectroscopy, methods for describing metastable resonances, methods for computing vibronic spectra, the nuclear-electronic orbital method, and several different energy decomposition analysis techniques. High-performance capabilities including multithreaded parallelism and support for calculations on graphics processing units are described. Q-Chem boasts a community of well over 100 active academic developers, and the continuing evolution of the software is supported by an "open teamware" model and an increasingly modular design.
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Large mass-independent fractionation signatures in Hg have been observed in the laboratory and the environment, prompting deep questions about the chemical reasons behind these signatures. Since the relative lack of mechanistic information about Hg chemistry in the environment has precluded explanations of these isotope effects, the present study uses high-level electronic structure methods to evaluate the possible photochemical mechanisms of mass-independent isotope effects (MIEs) in HgX2 and CH3HgX (X = Cl, Br, I, and SCH3). The results show that spin-orbit coupling wipes out the potential of MIEs for Hg bound to Br or I, but that complexes involving lighter elements, HgX2 and CH3HgX (X = Cl and SCH3), have relatively small spin-orbit couplings upon photolysis. This unexpected finding shows that magnetic isotope fractionation due to hyperfine coupling is possible, depending on the identity of the Hg complex. By examination of the photolysis potential energy profiles, this study shows that HgX2 complexes can have a positive or a negative MIE (depending on reaction conditions), while CH3HgX complexes exclusively result in a positive MIE. These findings agree with MIE recorded in natural samples, demonstrating a plausible mechanism for the surprising mass-independent fractionation of Hg in the environment.
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The electronically excited states of methylene (CH2), ethylene (C2H4), butadiene (C4H6), hexatriene (C6H8), and ozone (O3) have long proven challenging due to their complex mixtures of static and dynamic correlations. The semistochastic heat-bath configuration interaction (SHCI) algorithm, which efficiently and systematically approaches the full configuration interaction (FCI) limit, is used to provide close approximations to the FCI energies in these systems. This article presents the largest FCI-level calculation to date on hexatriene, using a polarized double-ζ basis (ANO-L-pVDZ), which gives rise to a Hilbert space containing more than 1038 determinants. These calculations give vertical excitation energies of 5.58 and 5.59 eV, respectively, for the 21Ag and 11Bu states, showing that they are nearly degenerate. The same excitation energies in butadiene/ANO-L-pVDZ were found to be 6.58 and 6.45 eV. In addition to these benchmarks, our calculations strongly support the presence of a previously hypothesized ring-minimum species of ozone that lies 1.3 eV higher than the open-ring-minimum energy structure and is separated from it by a barrier of 1.11 eV.
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This article introduces the restricted-active-space n-spin flip configuration interaction models, RAS(S)-SF and RAS(S,2h,2p)-SF, which provide highly correlated, yet low cost approaches for treating polyradical systems. These levels of theory add electronic degrees of freedom beyond those of previous spin flip approaches in order to achieve accurate ground and excited state energetics. The effects of additional dynamic correlation were investigated by comparing these two techniques to the prior RAS(h,p)-SF method on a variety of test systems, including multiple electronic states of methylene, tetramethyleneethane, three binuclear transition metal complexes, and a tetracene dimer. RAS(S,2h,2p)-SF significantly improves state descriptions in all cases and provides high accuracy even when using a minimal number of spin flips. Furthermore, this correlated level of theory is shown to be extensible to the large systems involved in singlet fission, where the multi-excitonic states in tetracene dimers are difficult to simulate with standard methods and therefore are still a matter of debate. Using a triple-zeta basis, the double triplet state, 1(TT), is predicted to be unbound. This result contradicts lower levels of theory and provides important insight into tetracene's ability to undergo efficient singlet fission.
