Anatomy of relativistic energy corrections in light molecular systems

Abstract

Relativistic energy corrections which arise from the use of the Dirac-Coulomb Hamiltonian, and the Gaunt and Breit interaction operators, plus Lamb-shift effects have been determined for the global minima of the ground electronic states of C2H6, NH3, H2O, [H,C,N], HNCO, HCOOH, SiC2, SiH3-, and H2S, and for barrier characteristics for these molecular systems (inversion barrier of NH3 and SiH3-, barrier to linearity of H2O, H2S, and HNCO, rotational barrier of C2H6, difference between conformations of HCOOH (Z/E) and SiC2 (linear/T-shaped), and isomerization barrier of HCN/HNC). The relativistic calculations performed at the Hartree-Fock and the highly correlated CCSD(T) levels employed a wide..