Configuration Interaction Study of the Electronic Structure of the OH Radical by the Atomic and Molecular Orbital Methods

Abstract

The role played in configuration interaction calculations by the particular form of the orbitals selected as basis is explored by a direct application on the electronic structure of the ground state of the OH molecule. Two configuration interaction studies have been carried out using different sets of one‐particle functions: (1) the set natural to the isolated atoms (called AO's) and (2) the orbitals belonging to the molecule (MO's). In (1), using the Hartree‐Fock 1s, 2s, and 2p functions for atomic oxygen and the 1s state for hydrogen, and keeping the 1s oxygen state doubly occupied, all Slater determinants of the appropriate ground state symmetry (²π) were found. The dissociation energy and the expansion coefficients of the determinants were determined by a variational procedure which minimized the energy of the system. The nonorthogonality of the basic AO's was treated without approximation by the method of Löwdin. The necessary integrals were calculated on Whirlwind I, the M.I.T. high‐speed digital computer; all two‐center integrals were computed by expanding the hydrogen orbital about the oxygen center (analogously to the methods of Barnett and Coulson, Coolidge, Löwdin, etc.). In (2), the molecular orbitals (MO's) were found as linear combinations of the above AO's, with coefficients determined by a modified self‐consistent field (Roothaan) procedure, in which the energy of a single Slater determinant was made stationary at three values of the internuclear separation. A configuration interaction calculation was then made using these ``best'' MO's as the basic set of one‐particle functions. Also included are a calculation of the dipole moment and Mulliken's electron distribution analysis. The results of these studies are discussed and comparison is made to experiment and other theoretical calculations.