Fully Relativistic Calculations of Faraday and Nuclear Spin-Induced Optical Rotation in Xenon.

Abstract

Nuclear spin-induced optical rotation (NSOR) arising from the Faraday effect may constitute an advantageous novel method for the detection of nuclear magnetization. We present first-principles nonrelativistic and relativistic, two- and four-component, basis-set limit calculations of this phenomenon for xenon. It is observed that only by utilization of relativistic methods may one qualitatively reproduce experimental liquid-state NSOR data. Relativistic effects lower the results by 50% as compared to nonrelativistic values. Indeed, relativistic Hartree-Fock calculations at the four-component or exact two-component (X2C) level account for the discrepancy between experimental results and earlier nonrelativistic theory. The nuclear magnetic shielding constant of traditional nuclear magnetic resonance as well as the Verdet constant parametrizing optical rotation due to an external magnetic field were also calculated. A comparison between results obtained using Hartree-Fock and density-functional theory methods at relativistic and nonrelativistic levels, as well as coupled cluster methods at the nonrelativistic level, was carried out. Completeness-optimized basis sets were employed throughout, for the first time in fully relativistic calculations. Full relativity decreases the Verdet constant by 4%. X2C theory decreases the absolute value of NSOR by 10-20% as compared to the four-component data, while for Verdet constants, the results are only slightly smaller than the fully relativistic values. For both properties, two-component calculations decrease the computational time by roughly 90%. Density-functional methods yield substantially larger values of NSOR than the Hartree-Fock theory or experiments. Intermolecular interactions are found to decrease NSOR and, hence, compensate for the electron correlation effect.