Ab initio calculation of molecular chiroptical properties

This review describes the first-principles calculation of chiroptical properties such as optical rotation, electronic and vibrational circular dichroism, and Raman optical activity. Recent years have witnessed a flurry of activity in this area, especially in the advancement of density-functional and coupled cluster methods, with two ultimate goals: the elucidation of the fundamental relationship between chiroptical properties and detailed molecular structure, and the development of a suite of computational tools for the assignment of the absolute configurations of chiral molecules. The underlying theory and the basic principles of such calculations are given for each property, and a number of representative applications are discussed.