An exact reformulation of the diagonalization step in electronic structure calculations as a set of second order...

A new formulation of the diagonalization step in self-consistent-field (SCF) electronic structure calculations is presented. It exactly replaces the diagonalization of the effective Hamiltonian with the solution of a set of second order nonlinear equations. The density matrix and/or the new set of occupied orbitals can be directly obtained from the resulting solution. This formulation may offer interesting possibilities for new approaches to efficient SCF calculations. The working equations can be derived either from energy minimization with respect to a Cayley-type parametrization of a unitary matrix, or from a similarity transformation approach.