Static Electron Correlation in Anharmonic Molecular Vibrations: A Hybrid TAO-DFT Study

Abstract

Hybrid thermally-assisted-occupation density functional theory is used to examine the effects of static electron correlation on the prediction of a benchmark set of experimentally observed molecular vibrational frequencies. The B3LYP and B97-1 thermally-assisted-occupation measure of static electron correlation is important for describing the vibrations of many of the molecules that make up several popular test sets of experimental data. Shifts are seen for known multireference systems and for many molecules containing atoms from the second row of the periodic table of elements. Several molecules only show significant shifts in select vibrational modes, and significant improvements are seen for the prediction of hydrogen stretching frequencies throughout the test set.