Relativistic effects on the nuclear magnetic shieldings of rare-gas atoms and halogen in hydrogen halides within relativistic polarization propagator theory

In this work an analysis of the electronic origin of relativistic effects on the isotropic dia- and paramagnetic contributions to the nuclear magnetic shielding sigma(X) for noble gases and heavy atoms of hydrogen halides is presented. All results were obtained within the 4-component polarization propagator formalism at different level of approach [random-phase approximation (RPA) and pure zeroth-order approximation (PZOA)], by using a local version of the DIRAC code. From the fact that calculations of diamagnetic contributions to sigma within RPA and PZOA approaches for HX(X = Br, I, At) and rare-gas atoms are quite close each to other and the finding that the diamagnetic part of the principal propagator at the PZOA level can be developed as a series [S(Delta)], it was found that there is a branch of negative-energy virtual excitations that contribute with more than 98% of the total diamagnetic value even for the heavier elements, namely, Xe, Rn, I, and At. It contains virtual negative-energy molecular-orbital states with energies between -2mc(2) and - 4mc(2). This fact can ;explain the excellent performance of the linear response elimination of small component (LR-ESC) scheme for elements up to the fifth row in the Periodic Table. An analysis of the convergency of [S(Delta)], and its physical implications is given. It is also shown that the total contribution to relativistic effects of the innermost orbital (1s(1/2)) is by far the largest. For the paramagnetic contributions results at the RPA and PZOA approximations are similar only for rare-gas atoms. On the other hand, if the mass-correction contributions to sigma(p) are expressed in terms of atomic orbitals, a different pattern is found for 1s(1/2) orbital contributions compared with all other s-type orbitals when the whole set of rare-gas atoms is considered. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.