A Phase-Space Electronic Hamiltonian for Molecules in a Static Magnetic Field II: Quantum Chemistry Calculations with Gauge Invariant Atomic Orbitals.

Abstract

In a companion paper, we have developed a phase-space electronic structure theory of molecules in magnetic fields, whereby the electronic energy levels arise from diagonalizing a phase-space Hamiltonian Ĥ_PS(X, P, G, B) that depends parametrically on nuclear position and momentum. The resulting eigenvalues are translationally invariant; moreover, if the magnetic field is in the z-direction, then the eigenvalues are also invariant to rotations around the z-direction. However, like all Hamiltonians in a magnetic field, the theory has a gauge degree of freedom (corresponding to the position of the magnetic origin in the vector potential), and requires either (i) formally, a complete set of electronic states or (ii) in practice, gauge-invariant atomic orbitals (GIAOs) in order to realize such translational and rotational invariance. Here we describe how to implement a phase-space electronic Hamiltonian using GIAOs within a practical electronic structure package (in our case, Q-Chem). We further show that novel phenomena can be observed with finite B-fields, including minimum energy structures with Π_min ≠ 0, indicating nonzero electronic motion in the ground-state.