Spin States and Other Ligand-Field States of Aqua Complexes Revisited with Multireference ab Initio Calculations Including Solvation Effects

High-level multireference (CASPT2, NEVPT2) calculations are reported for transition metal aqua complexes with electronic configurations from (3d)(1) to (3d)(8). We focus on the experimentally evidenced excitation energies to their various ligand-field states, including different spin states. By employing models accounting for both explicit and implicit solvation, we find that solvation effect may contribute up to 0.5 eV to the excitation energies depending on the charge of ion and character of the electronic transition. We further demonstrate that with an adequate choice of the active space and the energetics extrapolated to the complete basis set limit, the presently computed excitation energies are in a good agreement with the experimental data. This allows us to conclusively resolve significant discrepancies reported in earlier theory works [e.g., J. Phys. Chem. C 2014, 118, 29196-29208]. For the benchmark set of 19 spin-forbidden and 24 spin-allowed transitions (for which experimental data are unambiguous), we find the mean absolute error of 0.15 or 0.13 eV and the maximum error of 0.56 or 0.42 eV for CASPT2 or NEVPT2 calculations, respectively. For the particularly challenging sextet-quartet gap for [Fe(H2O)(6)](3+), we support our interpretation by additional calculations with multireference configuration interaction (MRCI) and coupled cluster theory up to the CCSDT(Q) level. By underlining a rather subtle interplay between the solvation and correlation effects, the findings of this Article are relevant not only for modeling and interpretation of optical spectra of transition metal complexes but also in further benchmarking of theoretical methods for the challenging problem of spin-state energetics.