ELECTRON-CORRELATION EFFECTS ON THE STATIC LONGITUDINAL POLARIZABILITY OF POLYMERIC CHAINS .2. BOND-LENGTH-ALTERNATION EFFECTS

Ab initio calculations of the static longitudinal polarizability of different molecular hydrogen model chains have been carried out at different levels of approximation to investigate the effects of including electron correlation as well as the variation of these effects as a function of the bond-length alternation of the systems. First, the coupled and uncoupled Hartree-Fock schemes have been employed. To assess the electron-correlation effects, the size-consistent Moller-Plesset treatments limited to second (MP2), third (MP3), and fourth (MP4) order in electron-electron interactions, as well as the coupled-cluster techniques including all double substitutions (CCD), all single and double substitutions (CCSD), and all single and double substitutions with a perturbational estimate of the connected triple excitations [CCSD(T)] have been used. Within the MP4 treatment, a decomposition of the electron-correlation corrections according to the different classes of substitutions and different order highlights the relatively greater importance of the double substitutions at second and third orders. The main findings are that (i) the coupled Hartree-Fock (CHF) technique overestimates the asymptotic static longitudinal polarizability per unit cell for the three types of H-2 chains under investigation; (ii) larger basis sets have to be employed when including electron correlation effects, otherwise, the correction is overestimated; (iii) these basis-set effects on the electron-correlation correction are enhanced in the case of the less alternating chains; (iv) using a sufficiently large atomic basis set, at the Moller-Plesset or CCSD(T) levels, the more conjugated the chains, the less the relative magnitude of the electron-correlation correction to the CHF value, whereas using the CCD and CCSD techniques, these relative electron-correlation corrections slightly increase in the case of the less alternating molecular hydrogen chains; and (v) the more conjugated the systems, the higher order the treatments of electron correlation required to get suitable values but the smaller the magnitude of electron-correlation correction.