Recent developments in the general atomic and molecular electronic structure system.

A discussion of many of the recently implemented features of GAMESS (General Atomic and Molecular Electronic Structure System) and LibCChem (the C++ CPU/GPU library associated with GAMESS) is presented. These features include fragmentation methods such as the fragment molecular orbital, effective fragment potential and effective fragment molecular orbital methods, hybrid MPI/OpenMP approaches to Hartree-Fock, and resolution of the identity second order perturbation theory. Many new coupled cluster theory methods have been implemented in GAMESS, as have multiple levels of density functional/tight binding theory. The role of accelerators, especially graphical processing units, is discussed in the context of the new features of LibCChem, as it is the associated problem of power consumption as the power of computers increases dramatically. The process by which a complex program suite such as GAMESS is maintained and developed is considered. Future developments are briefly summarized.

To Be or Not To Be a Molecular Ion: The Role of the Solvent in Photoionization of Arginine.

Application of photoionization mass spectroscopy, a technique capable of assessing protonation states in complex molecules in the gas phase, is challenging for arginine due to its fragility. We report photoionization efficiencies in the valence region of aqueous aerosol particles produced from arginine solutions under various pH and vaporization conditions. By using ab initio calculations, we investigate the stability of different conformers. Our results show that neutral arginine fragments upon ionization in the gas phase but solvation stabilizes the molecular ion, resulting in different photoionization dynamics. We also report the valence-band photoelectron spectra of the aerosol solutions obtained at different pH values.

Probing Electronic Wave Functions of Sodium-Doped Clusters: Dyson Orbitals, Anisotropy Parameters, and Ionization Cross-Sections.

We apply high-level ab initio methods to describe the electronic structure of small clusters of ammonia and dimethyl ether (DME) doped with sodium, which provide a model for solvated electrons. We investigate the effect of the solvent and cluster size on the electronic states. We consider both energies and properties, with a focus on the shape of the electronic wave function and the related experimental observables such as photoelectron angular distributions. The central quantity in modeling photoionization experiments is the Dyson orbital, which describes the difference between the initial N-electron and final (N-1)-electron states of a system. Dyson orbitals enter the expression of the photoelectron matrix element, which determines total and partial photoionization cross-sections. We compute Dyson orbitals for the Na(NH3)n and Na(DME)m clusters using correlated wave functions (obtained with equation-of-motion coupled-cluster model for electron attachment with single and double substitutions) and compare them with more approximate Hartree-Fock and Kohn-Sham orbitals. We also analyze the effect of correlation and basis sets on the shapes of Dyson orbitals and the experimental observables.

Photoelectron wave function in photoionization: plane wave or Coulomb wave?

The calculation of absolute total cross sections requires accurate wave functions of the photoelectron and of the initial and final states of the system. The essential information contained in the latter two can be condensed into a Dyson orbital. We employ correlated Dyson orbitals and test approximate treatments of the photoelectron wave function, that is, plane and Coulomb waves, by comparing computed and experimental photoionization and photodetachment spectra. We find that in anions, a plane wave treatment of the photoelectron provides a good description of photodetachment spectra. For photoionization of neutral atoms or molecules with one heavy atom, the photoelectron wave function must be treated as a Coulomb wave to account for the interaction of the photoelectron with the +1 charge of the ionized core. For larger molecules, the best agreement with experiment is often achieved by using a Coulomb wave with a partial (effective) charge smaller than unity. This likely derives from the fact that the effective charge at the centroid of the Dyson orbital, which serves as the origin of the spherical wave expansion, is smaller than the total charge of a polyatomic cation. The results suggest that accurate molecular photoionization cross sections can be computed with a modified central potential model that accounts for the nonspherical charge distribution of the core by adjusting the charge in the center of the expansion.

Gaseous vanadium molybdate and tungstates: thermodynamic properties and structures.

The stability of gaseous vanadium molybdate and vanadium tungstates was confirmed by high-temperature mass spectrometry. A number of gas-phase reactions involving vanadium-containing salts were studied. On the basis of equilibrium constants, the standard formation enthalpies of gaseous VMoO(4) (-676 ± 27 kJ/mol), VWO(3) (-331 ± 29 kJ/mol), and VWO(4) (-706 ± 23 kJ/mol) at 298 K were determined. A theoretical study of these salts revealed the structure with bidentate binding of the vanadium cation to the anion part to be the lowest-lying isomer, with a quartet spin state for VMoO(4) and VWO(4) molecules as well as a sextet spin state for the VWO(3) molecule. On the basis of critical analysis of the literature data concerning standard formation enthalpies of gaseous VO and VO(2), we adopted new values of Δ(f)H°(298) = 135 ± 10 kJ/mol for VO(g) and -185 ± 15.0 kJ/mol for VO(2)(g). Overall, the results obtained allowed us to estimate the standard formation enthalpy of VMoO(3) to be -318 kJ/mol with an accuracy near 40 kJ/mol.