The Calculation of Indirect Nuclear Spin–Spin Coupling Constants in Large Molecules

We present calculations of indirect nuclear spin-spin coupling constants in large molecular systems, performed using density functional theory. Such calculations, which have become possible because of the use of linear-scaling techniques in the evaluation of the Coulomb and exchange-correlation contributions to the electronic energy, allow us to study indirect spin-spin couplings in molecules of biological interest, without having to construct artificial model systems. In addition to presenting a statistical analysis of the large number of short-range coupling constants in large molecular systems, we analyse the asymptotic dependence of the indirect nuclear spin-spin coupling constants on the internuclear separation. In particular, we demonstrate that, in a sufficiently large one-electron basis set, the indirect spin-spin coupling constants become proportional to the inverse cube of the internuclear separation, even though the diamagnetic and paramagnetic spin-orbit contributions to the spin-spin coupling constants separately decay as the inverse square of this separation. By contrast, the triplet Fermi contact and spin-dipole contributions to the indirect spin-spin coupling constants decay exponentially and as the inverse cube of the internuclear separation, respectively. Thus, whereas short-range indirect spin-spin coupling constants are usually dominated by the Fermi contact contribution, long-range coupling constants are always dominated by the negative diamagnetic spin-orbit contribution and by the positive paramagnetic spin-orbit contribution, with small spin-dipole and negligible Fermi contact contributions.