Quantitative molecular thermochemistry based on path integrals

J Chem Phys. 2005 Jul 15;123(3):34103. doi: 10.1063/1.1954771.

Abstract

The calculation of thermochemical data requires accurate molecular energies and heat capacities. Traditional methods rely upon the standard harmonic normal-mode analysis to calculate the vibrational and rotational contributions. We utilize path-integral Monte Carlo for going beyond the harmonic analysis and to calculate the vibrational and rotational contributions to ab initio energies. This is an application and an extension of a method previously developed in our group [J. Chem. Phys. 118, 1596 (2003)].