Theoretical examination of QED Hamiltonian and negative-energy orbitals in relativistic molecular orbital theory

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the QED Hamiltonian in relativistic molecular orbital theory, proposing a new energy expression to prevent divergence and enabling the treatment of positron-containing systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel total energy expression with a counter term to address divergence issues and redefines QED-based DHF and correlation methods for relativistic molecular systems.

Findings

The total energy diverges without the counter term.

The proposed energy expression effectively prevents divergence.

QED-based methods can describe systems with positrons.

Abstract

The relativistic Hartree-Fock and electron correlation methods without the negative-energy orbital problem are examined on the basis of the quantum electrodynamics (QED) Hamiltonian. First, several QED Hamiltonians previously proposed are sifted by the orbital rotation invariance, the charge conjugation and time reversal invariance, and the nonrelativistic limit. A new total energy expression is then proposed, in which a counter term corresponding to the energy of the polarized vacuum is subtracted from the total energy. This expression prevents the possibility of total energy divergence due to electron correlations, stemming from the fact that the QED Hamiltonian does not conserve the number of particles. Finally, based on the Hamiltonian and energy expression, the Dirac-Hartree-Fock (DHF) and electron correlation methods are reintroduced. The resulting QED-based DHF equation has the same form as the conventional DHF equation, but also formally describes systems specific to QED, such as the virtual positrons in the hydride ion and the positron in positronium. Three electron correlation methods are derived: the QED-based configuration interactions and single- and multireference perturbation methods. Numerical calculations show that the total energy of the QED Hamiltonian indeed diverges and that the counter term is effective in avoiding the divergence. The theoretical examinations in the present article suggest that the molecular orbital (MO) methods based on the QED Hamiltonian not only solve the problem of the negative-energy solutions of the relativistic MO method, but also provide a relativistic formalism to treat systems containing positrons.