In computational chemistry, spin contamination is the artificial mixing of different electronic spin-states. This can occur when an approximate orbital-based wave function is represented in an unrestricted form – that is, when the spatial parts of α and β spin-orbitals are permitted to differ. Approximate wave functions with a high degree of spin contamination are undesirable. In particular, they are not eigenfunctions of the total spin-squared operator, Ŝ2, but can formally be expanded in terms of pure spin states of higher multiplicities (the contaminants).
Open-shell wave functions Within Hartree–Fock theory, the wave function is approximated as a Slater determinant of spin-orbitals. For an open-shell system, the mean-field approach of Hartree–Fock theory gives rise to different equations for the α and β orbitals. Consequently, there are two approaches that can be taken – either to force double occupation of the lowest orbitals by constraining the α and β spatial distributions to be the same (restricted open-shell Hartree–Fock, ROHF) or permit complete variational freedom (unrestricted Hartree–Fock UHF). In general, an N-electron Hartree–Fock wave function composed of Nα α-spin orbitals and Nβ β-spin orbitals can be written as
Ψ H F ( r 1 σ ( 1 ) ⋯ r N σ ( N ) ) = A ( ψ 1 α ( r 1 α 1 ) ⋯ ψ N α α ( r N α α N α ) ψ N α + 1 β ( r N α + 1 β N α + 1 ) ⋯ ψ N β ( r N β N ) ) . {\displaystyle \Psi ^{\mathrm {HF} }(\mathbf {r} _{1}\sigma (1)\cdots \mathbf {r} _{N}\sigma (N))={\mathcal {A}}\left(\psi _{1}^{\alpha }(\mathbf {r} _{1}\alpha _{1})\cdots \psi _{N_{\alpha }}^{\alpha }(\mathbf {r} _{N_{\alpha }}\alpha _{N_{\alpha }})\psi _{N_{\alpha }+1}^{\beta }(\mathbf {r} _{N_{\alpha }+1}\beta _{N_{\alpha }+1})\cdots \psi _{N}^{\beta }(\mathbf {r} _{N}\beta _{N})\right).}
where A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}} is the antisymmetrization operator. This wave function is an eigenfunction of the total spin projection operator, Ŝz, with eigenvalue (Nα − Nβ)/2 (assuming Nα ≥ Nβ). For a ROHF wave function, the first 2Nβ spin-orbitals are forced to have the same spatial distribution:
ψ j α ( r j ) = ψ N α + j β ( r N α + j ) , 1 ≤ j ≤ N β . {\displaystyle \psi _{j}^{\alpha }(\mathbf {r} _{j})=\psi _{N_{\alpha }+j}^{\beta }(\mathbf {r} _{N_{\alpha }+j}),\ \ \ 1\leq j\leq N_{\beta }.}
There is no such constraint in an UHF approach.
Contamination The total spin-squared operator commutes with the nonrelativistic molecular Hamiltonian, so it is desirable that any approximate wave function is an eigenfunction of Ŝ2. The eigenvalues of Ŝ2 are S(S + 1), where S is the spin quantum number of the system and can take the values 0 (singlet), 1/2 (doublet), 1 (triplet), 3/2 (quartet), and so forth. The Ŝ2 eigenvalues of the most common spin multiplicities are listed below.
Calculating ⟨Ŝ²⟩ for arbitrary Slater determinants The Ŝ² operator can be decomposed as:
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