ALGORITHMIC TOOLS IN THE STUDY OF SEMIEMPIRICAL POTENTIAL SURFACES

The most efficient optimization methods implemented in the semiempirical package AMPAC are presented. They concern the minimization of the energy or of the gradient norm by either pseudo-Newton or quadratic procedures, the search for transition states, and the intrinsic reaction coordinate in conjunction with variational transition-state theories. Nonlocal methods such as simulated annealing are also introduced.