Asymptotic behavior and interpretation of virtual states: The effects of confinement and of basis sets

A real-space high order finite difference method is used to analyze the effect of spherical domain size on the Hartree-Fock (and density functional theory) virtual eigenstates. We show the domain size dependence of both positive and negative virtual eigenvalues of the Hartree-Fock equations for small molecules. We demonstrate that positive states behave like a particle in spherical well and show how they approach zero. For the negative eigenstates, we show that large domains are needed to get the correct eigenvalues. We compare our results to those of Gaussian basis sets and draw some conclusions for real-space, basis-sets, and plane-waves calculations.