Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

Based on the diagonalization of an effective Hamiltonian, we investigate the role of electronic correlation on the aromatic behavior of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). We show that for benzene and several examples of PAHs, a singular change in the electronic distribution happens at a relatively narrow range of the Coulomb interaction strength; in each case, the CC bond distribution pattern agrees with the known chemical behavior of the corresponding compound. We explore the link between electronic correlation and information entropy and show that several signatures of fluctuations in the one-particle entropy occur at the same range of values of the Coulomb parameter that correspond to a realistic bond-order distribution of the PAHs. These results indicate that the singular stability of the electronic distribution of aromatic compounds is associated with an optimum range of correlation effects, which can be understood in terms of the entanglement of the two sub-lattices of alternating carbon atoms and the presence of a localization transition of the overall electronic density.

Aromatic compounds, Model Hamiltonian, Exact diagonalization, Electronic correlation, Information entropy

Based on a quantum chemical valence formalism that allows the rigorous construction of best-localized molecular orbitals on specific parts of an extended system, we examined the separability of individual components of model systems relevant to the description of electron transport in molecular devices. We started by examining how to construct the maximally localized electronic density at the tip of a realistic model of a gold electrode. By varying the number of gold atoms included in the local region where to project the total electronic density, we quantitatively assess how many molecular orbitals are entirely localized in that region. We then considered a 1,4-benzene-di-thiol molecule connected to two model gold electrodes and examined how to localize the electronic density of the total system in the extended molecule, a fractional entity comprising the organic molecule plus an increasing number of the closest metal atoms. We were able to identify in a rigorous manner the existence of three physically different electronic populations, each one corresponding to a distinct set of molecular orbitals. First, there are those entirely localized in the extended molecule, then there is a second group of those completely distributed in the gold atoms external to that region, and, finally, there are those delocalized over the entire system. This latter group can be associated to the shared electronic population between the extended molecule and the rest of the system. We suggest that the treatment here presented could be useful in the theoretical analysis of the electronic transport in nanodevices whenever the use of localized molecular states are required by the physics of the specific problem, such as in cases of weak coupling and super-exchange limits.