Communication: Hartree-Fock description of excited states of H₂

Hartree-Fock (HF) theory is most often applied to study the electronic ground states of molecular systems. However, with the advent of numerical techniques for locating higher solutions of the self-consistent field equations, it is now possible to examine the extent to which such mean-field solutions are useful approximations to electronic excited states. In this Communication, we use the maximum overlap method to locate 11 low-energy solutions of the HF equation for the H₂molecule and we find that, with only one exception, these yield surprisingly accurate models for the low-lying excited states of this molecule. This finding suggests that the HF solutions could be useful first-order approximations for correlated excited state wavefunctions.