Resonance Lifetimes from Complex Densities

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to calculate resonance lifetimes of metastable anions using complex densities obtained through complex-coordinate scaling, providing a new approach in quantum chemistry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel way to extract resonance lifetimes from complex densities, extending the density-based analysis to metastable states.

Findings

Resonance lifetimes can be derived from complex densities.

The method is demonstrated with one-electron examples.

It parallels the extraction of ground-state energies from densities.

Abstract

The ab-initio calculation of resonance lifetimes of metastable anions challenges modern quantum-chemical methods. The exact lifetime of the lowest-energy resonance is encoded into a complex "density" that can be obtained via complex-coordinate scaling. We illustrate this with one-electron examples and show how the lifetime can be extracted from the complex density in much the same way as the ground-state energy of bound systems is extracted from its ground-state density.