Automatic generation of force fields and property surfaces for use in variational vibrational calculations of anharmonic vibrational energies and zero-point vibrational averaged properties.

An automatic and general procedure for the calculation of geometrical derivatives of the energy and general property surfaces for molecular systems is developed and implemented. General expressions for an n-mode representation are derived, where the n-mode representation includes only the couplings between n or less degrees of freedom. The general expressions are specialized to derivative force fields and property surfaces, and a scheme for calculation of the numerical derivatives is implemented. The implementation is interfaced to electronic structure programs and may be used for both ground and excited electronic states. The implementation is done in the context of a vibrational structure program and can be used in combination with vibrational self-consistent field (VSCF), vibrational configuration interaction (VCI), vibrational Moller-Plesset, and vibrational coupled cluster calculations of anharmonic wave functions and calculation of vibrational averaged properties at the VSCF and VCI levels. Sample calculations are presented for fundamental vibrational energies and vibrationally averaged dipole moments and frequency dependent polarizabilities and hyperpolarizabilities of water and formaldehyde.