Multipoint Wronskian Method Applied on Model Potentials and Numerical Potential of Triplet H2 Yenal Ergun, H. Önder Pamuk, and Ersin Yurtsever Department of Chemistry, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey Z. Naturforsch. 45a, 889-892 (1990); received January 17, 1990 The multipoint Wronskian method is applied to one-dimensional vibrational eigenvalue prob- lems with two different potential functions. Systematic ways of selecting points are discussed. The errors introduced by interpolation methods and the effect of including higher derivatives of the potential are analyzed. Key words: Vibrational eigenvalue equation, Wronskian method, Numerical potentials. Introduction expectation value is minimum. Here the choice of the basis function is very critical [7], It is clear that any One of the most interesting areas of chemical basis set would produce very accurate results if a suffi- physics is the solution of eigenvalue equations for the ciently large number of functions can be employed vibrational motion of small molecules. The ever-pop- (provided that they form a complete basis). However, ular subject of "chaos in quantum chemistry" requires in practice this may not be always possible since it is a thorough understanding of the eigenvalue spectra of very expensive to carry out large matrix operations. model systems. It has been shown that inaccurate cal- Then one has to find a basis set which has a fast culations may cause even qualitatively incorrect re- convergence behaviour. The other criterion for the sults [1], On the other hand the vibrational motion of selection of basis functions is the relative ease of the the "real" systems such as diatomic or three-atomic computation of the variational integrals. The stan- molecules may pose different problems so that even dard methods employ functions whose integrals are the low-lying states may be difficult to compute accu- somewhat simple to generate and construct the largest rately [2, 3], Hence it is understandable that we still possible matrices to solve for the eigenvalues. have to search for new methods of solving such eigen- Recently a quasi-variational method was pro- value problems of small dimensions. posed by Demiralp [8] and generalized by one of us The earlier methods of solutions for vibrational [9]. The Wronskian method also employs a linear potentials of diatomic molecules were mostly based combination of basis functions as the trial solution. on variations of the Cooley algorithm [4, 5], These The main differences from the standard techniques is methods were shown to be very reliable for one- the fact that no integrals are required. The only re- dimensional equations. However there is only a small quirement is that functions should be differentiable. number of applications to the higher systems [6] due Since this is much easier to fulfill then the integrability to the high cost of computations. On the other hand, condition, it provides a great freedom for the selection the analytical methods can be applied in a variety of of basis functions. In this work we continue our anal- problems, but a preliminary modification is necessary ysis of the Wronskian method for several model and for efficient applications. The most common approach real systems. Our aim is to work with cases where is the Rayleigh-Ritz variational method, in which the detailed studies are available so that the advantages wavefunction is written as a linear combination of and the limitations of the method are clarified. some pre-determined basis functions. Then the un- known coefficients are optimized such that the energy Method Reprint requests to Ersin Yurtsever, Department of Chem- istry, Middle East Technical University, 06531 Ankara, The following discussion is for one-dimensional Turkey. problems, but generalization to many-dimensional 0932-0784 / 90 / 0700-903 $ 01.30/0. - Please order a reprint rather than making your own copy. 890 Y. Ergun et al. Multipoint Wronskian Method on Potentials of Triplet H2 cases is trivial. The eigenvalue equation is with HV^EV. (1) (H<Pp B 4>„ (9) mp = dx* Here E is the constant eigenvalue corresponding to the exact wavefunction. A functional form has to be where m = ((i— l)(nc+ l)) + /c +1 in our formulation. defined for the approximate solutions Equation (8) is a generalized eigenvalue problem for an unsymmetric operator and can be solved by stan- Hf(x) H(x) = (2) dard techniques. V(x) For the exact solution, E is infinitely differentiate, and all derivatives with respect to the coordinate are Calculations zero. As this cannot be satisfied by p{x), we may im- pose the condition that only a finite number of deriva- The purpose of this report is two-fold. We would like tives at a given point in the coordinate space should to develop some non-manual way of selecting points be zero. to be enforced for (4). We are also interested in the effect of including higher derivatives of n(x) on the dV(x) quality of results. To clarify this point, one should note = 0, k = \, 2,...,«. (3) that numerical solutions of vibrational eigenvalue dx* problems as well as variational ones are obtained by This is the original formulation of Demiralp, and it computing only the values of the potential but not of focusses only on a single point of the potential curve. its derivatives. In contrast, the Wronskian method re- If the potential curve has rapidly changing character- quires the computation of derivatives of the potential, istics, then it may be more efficient to apply the above hence it should producc higher quality results. From conditions over a range rather than a single point [9], ab-initio data it is relatively easy to obtain the first derivative with respect to internuclear distance by k d n(x) i=\,2,...,np and virtue of the virial theorem. However, higher deriva- dxk U' k = \,2,..., n , tives are in general computed by numerical proce- dures which introduce additional errors. Therefore where np and nc are the numbers of points and condi- one must find an optimum range of derivatives to be tions, respectively. computed provided they are analytically available. Now we can continue our derivation by expanding In order to test the applicability of the method we the unknown wavefunction as a linear combination of choose two different potentials. As an analytical func- basis functions: tion we use the Kratzer-Fues potential [10,11]. This f(x)= Z Cp0Jx). (5) function can be used to describe the interaction poten- p= i tial of a diatomic molecule, it has a regular singularity at the origin and its analytical solution can be ob- After differentiating HV = EY {k times): tained in terms of generalized Laguerre polynomials [12], d* 2 a with F0 = 25.0 a.u. and F(x) = F0 U d'/u a = 1.0 a.u. ' = ZC,I <2> (6) p =1 1=0 dx1 dx* Basis functions are chosen as exponential functions of applying conditions (4), we obtain the form p+s 1 c (p = x ~ e~ (11) I y = X c,n • (7) 112 P= l dx p= 1 dx* By setting s = 1/2 (1 + (1 + 8 F0 a) ) and a = 2 F0 a/s we observe that <£0 corresponds to the exact ground state, The final form of the equations can be written as and then we can analyze the higher vibrational eigen- AC = // BC (8) functions. Y. Ergun et al. • Multipoint Wronskian Method on Potentials of Triplet H2 891 0.500 0.550 0.600 0.650 0.700 k Fig. 1. Percent errors in of the Kratzer-Fues potential as a function of the parameter k of (12). Gaussian abscissas; Chebyshev abscissas; • • • • evenly spaced points. 1: six points, 2: four points and 3: three points. Our second test potential is the numerical ab- The Wronskian method can be considered analogous 3 initio data of Kolos and Wolniewicz [13] on the Zg to numerical integration procedures since they are excited state of H2. It is composed of 42 points be- also based on the computation of some functional tween 1.0 a.u. and 10.0 a.u. of distance. Accurate nu- forms at selected points. Therefore we choose the points merical solutions of it are available for comparison for (4) either equidistantly as in Simpson integration purposes. The basis set for this potential is formed or by appropriately scaled abscissas of Gaussian and from harmonic oscillator eigenfunctions. Its nonlinear Chebyshev quadratures. In Fig. 1 the percent errors of parameter is chosen by fitting a harmonic oscillator the third eigenvalue are plotted against k for different around the minimum. methods with 3, 4, and 6 point calculations. The final Since the Kratzer-Fues potential is an analytical matrix equations are all of dimension 12-12. That is potential and infinitely differentiable, we may analyze if (4) is enforced on 2 points then up to 5th derivatives the point-selection problem alone, as all derivatives of p(x) have to be computed. In case of the 6-point are computed analytically. A systematic way of deter- calculation only the first derivatives and functional mining the range for (4) and the distribution of points values of p(x) are used to set up A and B matrices within this range is reached by defining a parameter k: of (8), (9). The best results are obtained by using a Gauss V(x) k = j-— = (1 —2x)/x2. (12) quadrature-type selection of points and working in the region around k = 0.5, which corresponds to half The solution of (12) gives the range as the dissociation energy. This result is not unexpected. The points which lie either close to dissociation or those for very short internuclear distances do not con- tribute to lower eigenvalues.