Dalton is a powerful general-purpose program system for the study of molecular electronic structure at the Hartree–Fock, Kohn–Sham, multiconfigurational self-consistent-field, Møller–Plesset, configuration-interaction, and coupled-cluster levels of theory. Apart from the total energy, a wide variety of molecular properties may be calculated using these electronic-structure models. Molecular gradients and Hessians are available for geometry optimizations, molecular dynamics, and vibrational studies, whereas magnetic resonance and optical activity can be studied in a gauge-origin-invariant manner. Frequency-dependent molecular properties can be calculated using linear, quadratic, and cubic response theory. A large number of singlet and triplet perturbation operators are available for the study of one-, two-, and three-photon processes. Environmental effects may be included using various dielectric-medium and quantum-mechanics/molecular-mechanics models. Large molecules may be studied using linear-scaling and massively parallel algorithms. Dalton is distributed at no cost from http://www.daltonprogram.org for a number of UNIX platforms.

Articles you may be interested inA fully relativistic method for calculation of nuclear magnetic shielding tensors with a restricted magnetically balanced basis in the framework of the matrix Dirac-Kohn-Sham equationa)Perturbational ab initio calculations of relativistic contributions to nuclear magnetic resonance shielding tensorsWe propose and evaluate first principles methods for calculating the nuclear shielding tensor in open-shell, paramagnetic molecules, dealing with the case of small spin-orbit coupling that, in turn, implies the best applicability to light, organic compounds. The formalism is consistent up to second order in the fine structure constant, and includes orbital, fully anisotropic dipolar, and isotropic contact contributions to the tensor. The proposed method is implemented within the ab initio singleand multiconfiguration self-consistent field as well as density functional theory frameworks. The applications include small main-group radicals and larger nitroxide radicals. The analysis of the results and comparison with the experimental nuclear magnetic resonance data, which are available for the latter compounds, indicate promising accuracy and applicability of the density functional theory method to chemically interesting problems.

We analyze the ability of spin-flip time dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) to uniformly describe excited states of single, double, and mixed excitation character in closed-shell molecular systems, using the polyene oligomers as a primary test case. The results of comparison between conventional and spin-flip TD-DFT and with correlated ab initio methods indicate that spin-flip TD-DFT provides a more consistent description of the ordering and relative positions of the excited states than conventional TD-DFT provided a suitable exchange-correlation functional is used in the calculations. It is found that spin-flip TD-DFT provides a physically appealing picture of excitation processes which involve one or two electrons, as it captures their most important features and facilitates a more uniform description of excited states with different character. This makes spin-flip TD-DFT a promising approach for general modeling of excited states and spectra of medium and large size molecules, which exhibit low-lying excited states with strong double excitation character.

We present the first study of two-photon absorption (TPA) of solvated molecules based on direct evaluation of TPA cross sections from the quadratic response of time-dependent perturbations. A set of prototypical two-photon (TP) chromophores has been selected and analyzed: a pure pi system (t-stilbene) and its substituted homologs obtained employing a donor (D) and an acceptor (A) group to probe the solvent effects along the series pi, D-pi-D, A-pi-D, and A-pi-A. For the selected systems we have calculated the TPA cross sections in different environments by means of the polarizable continuum model. The data have been analyzed to evaluate how the structural and environmental parameters contribute to the final two-photon absorption cross section. These include molecular structure, geometry relaxation in solution, polarity, and refractive index of the solvent. The performances of the three common functionals SVWN, BLYP, and B3LYP have been compared. The results show a significant solvent dependence of the TPA cross section and an unusual trend when passing from cyclohexane to water. The data have also been rationalized in terms of the main orbital excitations leading to the transitions. Finally, trends along the series have been described and comparison with experiments and previous calculations has been drawn.

We introduce a density functional theory/molecular mechanical approach for computation of linear response properties of molecules in heterogeneous environments, such as metal surfaces or nanoparticles embedded in solvents. The heterogeneous embedding environment, consisting from metallic and nonmetallic parts, is described by combined force fields, where conventional force fields are used for the nonmetallic part and capacitance-polarization-based force fields are used for the metallic part. The presented approach enables studies of properties and spectra of systems embedded in or placed at arbitrary shaped metallic surfaces, clusters, or nanoparticles. The capability and performance of the proposed approach is illustrated by sample calculations of optical absorption spectra of thymidine absorbed on gold surfaces in an aqueous environment, where we study how different organizations of the gold surface and how the combined, nonadditive effect of the two environments is reflected in the optical absorption spectrum.

In this paper we report the derivation and the performance of a spin-restricted density functional formalism for linear time-dependent properties in open-shell molecules. The formalism is based on an exponential parameterization of the density operator with the response functions defined through Ehrenfest’s principle. In addition to the derivation of formulas, details of implementation are given as well as a discussion of numerical results for excitation energies and dynamic polarizabilities for a selected set of radicals.

We present density functional response theory generalized to triplet excitations. A method based on an exponential parametrization of the spin-dependent density operator is derived for the evaluation of linear and quadratic response functions for spin-dependent perturbations. The developed methodology is applicable to commonly available functionals, also hybrid functionals including exchange–correlation functionals at the general gradient-approximation level and fractional exact Hartree–Fock exchange. Illustrative calculations are presented for singlet–triplet transition moments and phosphorescence lifetimes, providing numerical data on these quantities for the first time using time-dependent density functional theory.

The dimethylamino nitro stilbene (DANS) molecule is studied for exploring solvent effects on two-photon absorption using the quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) response theory approach, where the quantum part is represented by density functional theory. We have explored the role of geometrical change of the chromophore in solution, the importance of taking a dynamical average over the sampled structures and the role of a granular representation of the polarization and electrostatic interactions with the classically described medium. The line shape function was simulated by the QM/MM technique thereby allowing for non-empirical prediction of the absolute two-photon cross section. We report a maximum in the TPA cross section for a medium of intermediate solvent polarity (i.e. in chloroform) and provide the grounds for an explanation of this effect which recently has been experimentally observed for a series of charge transfer species in solvents of different polarity. The calculations of absorption energies reproduce well the positive solvatochromic behavior of DANS and are in good agreement with experimental spectra available for the chloroform and DMSO solvents. In line with recent development of the QM/MM response technique for color modeling, we find this methodology to offer a versatile tool to predict and analyze two-photon absorption phenomena taking place within a medium.