To evaluate vibronic spectra beyond the Condon approximation, we extend the on-the-fly ab initio thawed Gaussian approximation by considering the Herzberg-Teller contribution due to the dependence of the electronic transition dipole moment on nuclear coordinates. The extended thawed Gaussian approximation is tested on electronic absorption spectra of the phenyl radical and benzene; calculated spectra reproduce experimental data and are much more accurate than standard global harmonic approaches, confirming the significance of anharmonicity. Moreover, the extended method provides a tool to quantify the Herzberg-Teller contribution; we show that in the phenyl radical, anharmonicity outweighs the Herzberg-Teller contribution, whereas in benzene, the Herzberg-Teller contribution is essential because the transition is electronically forbidden and the Condon approximation yields a zero spectrum. Surprisingly, both adiabatic harmonic spectra outperform those of the vertical harmonic model, which describes the Franck-Condon region better. Finally, we provide a simple recipe for orientationally averaging spectra, valid beyond the Condon approximation, and a relation among the transition dipole, its gradient, and nonadiabatic coupling vectors.

To alleviate the computational cost associated with on-the-fly ab initio semiclassical calculations of molecular spectra, we propose the single-Hessian thawed Gaussian approximation, in which the Hessian of the potential energy at all points along an anharmonic classical trajectory is approximated by a constant matrix. The spectra obtained with this approximation are compared with the exact quantum spectra of a one-dimensional Morse potential and with the experimental spectra of ammonia and quinquethiophene. In all cases, the single-Hessian version performs almost as well as the much more expensive on-the-fly ab initio thawed Gaussian approximation and significantly better than the global harmonic schemes. Remarkably, unlike the thawed Gaussian approximation, the proposed method conserves energy exactly, despite the time dependence of the corresponding effective Hamiltonian, and, in addition, can be mapped to a higher-dimensional time-independent classical Hamiltonian system.We also provide a detailed comparison with several related approximations used for accelerating prefactor calculations in semiclassical simulations.

Evaluation of symmetry-forbidden or weakly-allowed vibronic spectra requires treating the transition dipole moment beyond the Condon approximation. To include vibronic spectral features not captured in the global harmonic models, we have recently implemented an on-the-fly ab initio extended thawed Gaussian approximation, where the propagated wavepacket is a Gaussian multiplied by a linear polynomial. To include more anharmonic effects, here we represent the initial wavepacket by a superposition of three independent Gaussian wavepackets-one for the Condon term and two displaced Gaussians for the Herzberg-Teller part. Application of this ab initio "three thawed Gaussians approximation" to vibrationally resolved electronic spectra of the phenyl radical and benzene shows a clear improvement over the global harmonic and Condon approximations.The orientational averaging of spectra, the relation between the gradient of the transition dipole moment and nonadiabatic coupling vectors, and the details of the extended and three thawed Gaussians approximation are discussed. * jiri.vanicek@epfl.ch.

Azulene is a prototypical molecule with an anomalous fluorescence from the second excited electronic state, thus violating Kasha's rule, and with an emission spectrum that cannot be understood within the Condon approximation. To better understand photophysics and spectroscopy of azulene and other non-conventional molecules, we develop a systematic, general, and efficient computational approach combining semiclassical dynamics of nuclei with ab initio electronic structure. First, to analyze the nonadiabatic effects, we complement the standard population dynamics by a rigorous 1 arXiv:2001.08414v2 [physics.chem-ph] measure of adiabaticity, estimated with the multiple-surface dephasing representation.Second, we propose a new semiclassical method for simulating non-Condon spectra, which combines the extended thawed Gaussian approximation with the efficient single-Hessian approach. S 1 ← S 0 and S 2 ← S 0 absorption and S 2 → S 0 emission spectra of azulene, recorded in a new set of experiments, agree very well with our calculations. We find that accuracy of the evaluated spectra requires the treatment of anharmonicity, Herzberg-Teller, and mode-mixing effects.

TURBOMOLE is a highly optimized software suite for largescale quantum-chemical and materials science simulations of molecules, clusters, extended systems, and periodic solids. TURBOMOLE uses Gaussian basis sets and has been designed with robust and fast quantum-chemical applications in mind, ranging from homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis to inorganic and organic chemistry and various types of spectroscopy, light− matter interactions, and biochemistry. This Perspective briefly surveys TURBOMOLE's functionality and highlights recent developments that have taken place between 2020 and 2023, comprising new electronic structure methods for molecules and solids, previously unavailable molecular properties, embedding, and molecular dynamics approaches. Select features under development are reviewed to illustrate the continuous growth of the program suite, including nuclear electronic orbital methods, Hartree−Fock-based adiabatic connection models, simplified time-dependent density functional theory, relativistic effects and magnetic properties, and multiscale modeling of optical properties.