A user who is studying vibrational Stark effects would like to do a calculation for a molecule in dielectric medium with an E-field applied along a direction. It seems that Q-Chem can handle such a calculation (adding both PCM and multipole field), but I’m not entirely sure what has been calculated there, i.e., how the electric field is handled. Does the E-field interact and polarize the dielectric continuum, or does it simply interact with the molecular dipole as in the gas phase calculations? Some advice is needed.
My guess is that the applied field does not interact with the continuum directly, but rather polarizes the density in the same way that it would in a gas phase calculation with an applied field, but then that density is coupled to the continuum via the SCRF problem. Would need to do some testing to be certain.