Low-Lying Valence Excited States of CNC, C₂N, N₃ and NCO Studied Using the Electron-Attached and Ionized Symmetry-Adapted Cluster Configuration-Interaction and Equation-of-Motion Coupled-Cluster Methodologies

Low-lying valence excited states of four open-shell triatomic molecules, CNC, C2N, N3, and NCO, are investigated using the electron-attached (EA) and ionized (IP) symmetry-adapted-cluster configuration-interaction (SAC-CI) general-R as well as the full and active-space EA and IP equation-of-motion coupled-cluster (EOMCC) methods. A comparison is made with experiment and with the results of the completely renormalized (CR) CC calculations with singles, doubles, and non-iterative triples defining the CR-CC(2,3) approach. Adiabatic excitation energies of the calculated states are in reasonable agreement with the experimental values, provided that the 3-particle-2-hole (3p-2h) components in the electron attaching operator, as in the EA SAC-CI SDT-R and EA EOMCCSD(3p-2h) approaches, are included in the calculations for the excited states of C2N and CNC which have a predominantly two-electron character. The results also reveal that the active-space EA/IP EOMCC schemes with up to 3p-2h/3h-2p excitations are able to accurately reproduce the results of their much more expensive parent methods while requiring significantly less computational effort. Furthermore, the more 'black-box' CR-CC(2,3) approach calculates the lowest state of each symmetry with the same accuracy as that obtained with the EA/IP SAC-CI SDT-R and EA/IP EOMCCSD(3p-2h/3h-2p) methods, confirming the significance of higher-order correlation effects in obtaining an accurate description of excited states of radicals, particularly the valence excited states of the CNC and C2N species dominated by two-electron processes.