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Interaction electron correlation and entanglement in molecules

TINA ANNA CATTOLICA MAIOLO, Fabio Della Sala, L. Martina, Giulio Soliani

Published Jan 1, 2007• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We use the concept of quantum entanglement to give a physical meaning to the electron correlation energy in systems of interacting electrons. The electron correlation is not directly observable, being defined as the difference between the exact ground state energy of the many-electron Schr ̈odinger equation and the Hartree–Fock energy. Using the configuration interaction method for the hydrogen molecule, we calculate the correlation energy and compare it with the entanglement as a function of the nucleus– nucleus separation. In the same spirit, we analyze a dimer of ethylene, which represents the simplest organic conjugate system, changing the relative orientation and distance of the molecules to obtain the configuration corresponding to maximum entanglement.

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We use the concept of quantum entanglement to give a physical meaning to the electron correlation energy in systems of interacting electrons. The electron correlation is not directly observable, being defined as the difference between the exact ground state energy of the many-electron Schr ̈odinger equation and the Hartree–Fock energy. Using the configuration interaction method for the hydrogen molecule, we calculate the correlation energy and compare it with the entanglement as a function of the nucleus– nucleus separation. In the same spirit, we analyze a dimer of ethylene, which represents the simplest organic conjugate system, changing the relative orientation and distance of the molecules to obtain the configuration corresponding to maximum entanglement.
Abstract We study the relation between quantum entanglement and electron correlation in quantum chemistry calculations. We prove that the Hartree–Fock (HF) wave function does not violate Bell's inequality, and thus is not entangled, whereas the configuration interaction (CI) wave function is entangled since it violates Bell's inequality. Entanglement is related to electron correlation and might be used as an alternative measure of the electron correlation in quantum chemistry calculations. As an example we show the calculations of entanglement for the H2 molecule and how it correlates with the traditional electron correlation, which is the difference between the exact and the HF energies.
We study the relation between quantum entanglement and electron correlation in quantum chemistry calculations. We prove that the Hartree-Fock (HF) wave function does not violate Bell's inequality, thus is not entangled while the configuration interaction (CI) wave function is entangled since it violates Bell's inequality. Entanglement is related to electron correlation and might be used as an alternative measure of the electron correlation in quantum chemistry calculations. As an example we show the calculations of entanglement for the H2_22​ molecule and how it is related to electron correlation of the system, which is the difference between the exact and the HF energies.
We theoretically investigate the quantum correlations (in terms of concurrence of indistinguishable electrons) in a prototype molecular system (hydrogen molecule). With the assistance of the standard approximations of the linear combination of atomic orbitals and the configuration interaction methods we describe the electronic wavefunction of the ground state of the H 2 molecule. Moreover, we managed to find a rather simple analytic expression for the concurrence (the most used measure of quantum entanglement) of the two electrons when the molecule is in its lowest energy. We have found that concurrence does not really show any relation to the construction of the chemical bond.
In both molecular physics and condensed matter theory, deeper understanding of the correlation energy density ϵc(r){ϵ}_{c}(\mathbf{r})ϵc​(r) remains a high priority. By adopting L\"owdin's definition of correlation energy as the difference between the exact and the Hartree-Fock values, here we propose two alternative routes to define this. One of these involves both exact and Hartree-Fock (HF) wave functions, while the second requires a coupling constant integration. As an exact analytical example of the first route, we treat the two-electron model atom of Moshinsky, for which both confinement potential and interactions are harmonic. Though the correlation energy density ϵc(r){ϵ}_{c}(\mathbf{r})ϵc​(r) is known analytically, we also investigate numerically its relation to the exact ground-state density in this example.
Electron–electron correlation in quantum chemistry calculations can be analysed in terms of entanglement between electrons. Two exactly solvable models: two fixed spin-1/2 particles and two-electron two-site Hubbard model are used to define and discuss the entanglement as a function of the system parameters. Ab initio configuration interaction calculation for entanglement is presented for the H2 molecule. Qualitatively, entanglement and electron–electron correlation have similar behaviour. Thus, entanglement might be used as an alternative measure of electron correlation in quantum chemistry calculations.
Recent proposals of measuring bipartite Renyi entropy experimentally involve techniques that hold exactly for non-interacting quantum particles. Here we consider the difference between such measurements and the actual Renyi entropy for ground state fermion ab initio molecular systems. To calculate various entanglement measures we extended several different techniques for use with variational Monte Carlo, Hartree-Fock and quantum chemistry methods. Our results show that in systems with strong electron correlations the Renyi entropy may not be accurately determined with the proposed measurements. In addition, we find significant physical insight can be gained by calculating entanglement properties in molecular systems. We see that the Renyi entropy and the entanglement Hamiltonian encode information about the character of the covalent bonds in a molecular system and that such information may lead to better descriptions of bonded systems that have been traditionally hard to describe with standard techniques. In particular our results for the C2_{2}2​ dimer suggests all eight valence electrons play a significant role in covalent bonding.