Communication: Becke Weights as a Partitioning Scheme for Phase Space Electronic Structure Theory

Abstract

We implement the Becke weight for atom A ($w_A$) as the partitioning scheme needed for phase space electronic structure theory. We show that this ansatz can lead to very efficient electronic structure calculations at nonzero nuclear momentum ($P \ne 0$). We further show that using Becke weights leads to efficient VCD calculations that are very stable with respect to basis set size. We hypothesize that, as far as quantum chemistry simulations in an atomic orbitals basis, the choice of Becke weights as a partitioning scheme will be adopted for all future phase space electronic structure calculations in an atomic orbital basis, as theorists learn to efficiently simulate coupled nuclear electronic dynamics through a new framework.