Atomic Spectral Methods for Ab Initio Molecular Electronic Energy Surfaces: Transitioning From Small-Molecule to Biomolecular-Suitable Approaches.

Continuing attention has addressed incorportation of the electronically dynamical attributes of biomolecules in the largely static first-generation molecular-mechanical force fields commonly employed in molecular-dynamics simulations. We describe here a universal quantum-mechanical approach to calculations of the electronic energy surfaces of both small molecules and large aggregates on a common basis which can include such electronic attributes, and which also seems well-suited to adaptation in ab initio molecular-dynamics applications. In contrast to the more familiar orbital-product-based methodologies employed in traditional small-molecule computational quantum chemistry, the present approach is based on an "ex-post-facto" method in which Hamiltonian matrices are evaluated prior to wave function antisymmetrization, implemented here in the support of a Hilbert space of orthonormal products of many-electron atomic spectral eigenstates familiar from the van der Waals theory of long-range interactions.