# qml.qchem.meanfield¶

meanfield(symbols, coordinates, name='molecule', charge=0, mult=1, basis='sto-3g', package='pyscf', outpath='.')[source]

Generates a file from which the mean field electronic structure of the molecule can be retrieved.

This function uses OpenFermion-PySCF plugins to perform the Hartree-Fock (HF) calculation for the polyatomic system using the quantum chemistry packages PySCF. The mean field electronic structure is saved in an hdf5-formatted file.

The charge of the molecule can be given to simulate cationic/anionic systems. Also, the spin multiplicity can be input to determine the number of unpaired electrons occupying the HF orbitals as illustrated in the figure below.

Parameters
• symbols (list[str]) – symbols of the atomic species in the molecule

• coordinates (array[float]) – 1D array with the atomic positions in Cartesian coordinates. The coordinates must be given in atomic units and the size of the array should be 3*N where N is the number of atoms.

• name (str) – molecule label

• charge (int) – net charge of the system

• mult (int) – Spin multiplicity $$\mathrm{mult}=N_\mathrm{unpaired} + 1$$ for $$N_\mathrm{unpaired}$$ unpaired electrons occupying the HF orbitals. Possible values for mult are $$1, 2, 3, \ldots$$. If not specified, a closed-shell HF state is assumed.

• basis (str) – Atomic basis set used to represent the HF orbitals. Basis set availability per element can be found here

• package (str) – Quantum chemistry package used to solve the Hartree-Fock equations.

• outpath (str) – path to output directory

Returns

absolute path to the file containing the mean field electronic structure

Return type

str

Example

>>> symbols, coordinates = (['H', 'H'], np.array([0., 0., -0.66140414, 0., 0., 0.66140414]))
>>> meanfield(symbols, coordinates, name="h2")
./h2_pyscf_sto-3g

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