A fresh look at the photoelectron spectrum of bromobenzene: A third-order non-Dyson electron propagator study.

The valence-shell ionization spectrum of bromobenzene, as a representative halogen substituted aromatic, was studied using the non-Dyson third-order algebraic-diagrammatic construction [nD-ADC(3)] approximation for the electron propagator. This method, also referred to as IP-ADC(3), was implemented as a part of the Q-Chem program and enables large-scale calculations of the ionization spectra, where the computational effort scales as n(5) with respect to the number of molecular orbitals n. The IP-ADC(3) scheme is ideally suited for investigating low-lying ionization transitions, so fresh insight could be gained into the cationic state manifold of bromobenzene. In particular, the present IP-ADC(3) calculations with the cc-pVTZ basis reveal a whole class of low-lying low-intensity two-hole-one-particle (2h-1p) doublet and quartet states, which are relevant to various photoionization processes. The good qualitative agreement between the theoretical spectral profile for the valence-shell ionization transitions generated with the smaller cc-pVDZ basis set and the experimental photoelectron spectrum measured at a photon energy of 80 eV on the PLÉIADES beamline at the Soleil synchrotron radiation source allowed all the main features to be assigned. Some theoretical aspects of the ionization energy calculations concerning the use of various approximation schemes and basis sets are discussed.

Can an ab initio three-body virial equation describe the mercury gas phase?

We report a sixth-order ab initio virial equation of state (EOS) for mercury. The virial coefficients were determined in the temperature range from 500 to 7750 K using a three-body approximation to the N-body interaction potential. The underlying two-body and three-body potentials were fitted to highly accurate Coupled-Cluster interaction energies of Hg2 (Pahl, E.; Figgen, D.; Thierfelder, C.; Peterson, K. A.; Calvo, F.; Schwerdtfeger, P. J. Chem. Phys. 2010, 132, 114301-1) and equilateral-triangular configurations of Hg3. We find the virial coefficients of order four and higher to be negative and to have large absolute values over the entire temperature range considered. The validity of our three-body, sixth-order EOS seems to be limited to small densities of about 1.5 g cm(-3) and somewhat higher densities at higher temperatures. Termwise analysis and comparison to experimental gas-phase data suggest a small convergence radius of the virial EOS itself as well as a failure of the three-body interaction model (i.e., poor convergence of the many-body expansion for mercury). We conjecture that the nth-order term of the virial EOS is to be evaluated from the full n-body interaction potential for a quantitative picture. Consequently, an ab initio three-body virial equation cannot describe the mercury gas phase.

Calculations of nonlinear response properties using the intermediate state representation and the algebraic-diagrammatic construction polarization propagator approach: two-photon absorption spectra.

An earlier proposed approach to molecular response functions based on the intermediate state representation (ISR) of polarization propagator and algebraic-diagrammatic construction (ADC) approximations is for the first time employed for calculations of nonlinear response properties. The two-photon absorption (TPA) spectra are considered. The hierarchy of the first- and second-order ADC∕ISR computational schemes, ADC(1), ADC(2), ADC(2)-x, and ADC(3/2), is tested in applications to H(2)O, HF, and C(2)H(4) (ethylene). The calculated TPA spectra are compared with the results of coupled cluster (CC) models and time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) calculations, using the results of the CC3 model as benchmarks. As a more realistic example, the TPA spectrum of C(8)H(10) (octatetraene) is calculated using the ADC(2)-x and ADC(2) methods. The results are compared with the results of TDDFT method and earlier calculations, as well as to the available experimental data. A prominent feature of octatetraene and other polyene molecules is the existence of low-lying excited states with increased double excitation character. We demonstrate that the two-photon absorption involving such states can be adequately studied using the ADC(2)-x scheme, explicitly accounting for interaction of doubly excited configurations. Observed peaks in the experimental TPA spectrum of octatetraene are assigned based on our calculations.