Efficient Quantum Chemistry for Applications in Anharmonic Vibrational Analysis and Molecular Crystals

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Nelson, Philip
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Abstract
Quantum chemistry can give invaluable quantitative insights into the properties of molecular systems without the need for physical experimentation. However, the poor algorithmic scaling of quantum chemistry methods restricts the most accurate methods to all but the smallest systems. Development of improved software, algorithms, and theoretical approximations can extend the size of molecules able to be studied computationally, an essential prerequisite for applications to real chemical systems. In the first two chapters, we present open-source software for the computation of the anharmonic vibrational frequencies of molecules using vibrational perturbation theory. Through the use of focal-point approximations to estimate complete-basis coupled cluster and novel software enabling automated distributed computations, we are able to obtain anharmonic frequencies in a fraction of the time of alternative approaches without sacrificing accuracy. Computation of the lattice energies of molecular crystals is another challenging application of quantum chemistry methods. Chapter 4 explores the contributions of three-body interactions in crystalline formamide, acetic acid, and imidazole. We demonstrate the ability to obtain three-body contributions to the lattice energy of molecular crystals at accuracy within 1 kJ/mol at a greatly reduced compuational cost, using approximate methods and geometric screening of the many-body expansion. Finally, we present results of a preliminary study of virtual screening for G-protein coupled receptor targets, an important class of pharmaceutically relevant proteins, using machine learning and cheminformatics representations.
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2024-08-28
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