Theoretical Study of Spin-orbit Coupling in Molecules

Book excerpt: Theoretical models to study spin-obit coupling with multi-configurational wavefunctions have been developed both methodologically and implemented into the widely distributed quantum chemistry package GAMESS. Various aspects of making the spin-orbit coupling studies more efficient and thus more available, such as extensive usage of symmetry and parallelisation have been studied. A theoretical development of one, two and partial two electron approaches to spin-orbit coupling is given and tested on a representative set of molecules. A new accurate method to study the vibrational structure of molecules, limited in the current formulation to diatomics, has been proposed. Two chemically interesting systems have been studied, the reaction path of titanium cation and ethane, and the vibrational structure of CO and 02+.