Time-efficient computation of the electronic structure of the C60 super-atom molecular orbital (SAMO) states in TDDFT

Abstract

Fullerenes have a dense manifold of excited states composed of valence excited states and Rydberg states. Among Rydberg states, one distinguishes Super Atom Molecular Orbitals (SAMO), excited states in which an electron is promoted to a diffuse nanometer size molecular orbital with a hydrogenic-like character. Unlike typical Rydberg states, the electronic density of the SAMO states is mainly localized inside and in the close vicinity of the fullerene cage. In this proceeding, we propose a time-saving way to compute the electronic structure of the SAMO and Rydberg states of fullerenes at the TDDFT level by limiting the number of excitations allowed to build the excited states. We investigate the effect of limiting the number of excitations in C60 and compare it to the experimental binding energies. We also investigate the effect of the functional and basis set on the binding energies of the SAMO states.