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Concept
Ab initio quantum chemistry methods
Summary
Ab initio quantum chemistry methods are computational chemistry methods based on quantum chemistry. The term ab initio was first used in quantum chemistry by Robert Parr and coworkers, including David Craig in a semiempirical study on the excited states of benzene. The background is described by Parr. Ab initio means "from first principles" or "from the beginning", implying that the only inputs into an ab initio calculation are physical constants. Ab initio quantum chemistry methods attempt to solve the electronic Schrödinger equation given the positions of the nuclei and the number of electrons in order to yield useful information such as electron densities, energies and other properties of the system. The ability to run these calculations has enabled theoretical chemists to solve a range of problems and their importance is highlighted by the awarding of the Nobel prize to John Pople and Walter Kohn.
Ab initio electronic structure methods aim to calculate the many electron function which is the solution of the non-relativistic electronic Schrödinger equation (in the Born–Oppenheimer approximation). The many electron function is generally a linear combination of many simpler electron functions with the dominant function being the Hartree-Fock function. Each of these simple functions are then approximated using only one-electron functions. The one-electron functions are then expanded as a linear combination of a finite set of basis functions. This approach has the advantage that it can be made to converge to the exact solution, when the basis set tends toward the limit of a complete set and where all possible configurations are included (called "Full CI"). However this convergence to the limit is computationally very demanding and most calculations are far from the limit. Nevertheless important conclusions have been made from these more limited classifications.
One needs to consider the computational cost of ab initio methods when determining whether they are appropriate for the problem at hand.
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