ORCA 5.0 is largely driven by a completely new integral engine and task driver that was given the name SHARK.

4 The new features in ORCA 5.0 have also been partly described in the most recent article describing ORCA functionality. This short software update will provide an overview over the functionality added to ORCA since the publication of the original 2012 WIRES article, update for ORCA 4.0. Taken together, these features allow for computational studies throughout all domains of chemistry to be performed efficiently and largely without the need to rely on third party software. Highlights of ORCA include (1) State-of-the art performance, (2) comprehensive theoretical methodology, (3) user friendliness, and (4) platform independence. Additional educational resources include the tutorials site at FAccTs ( ), the ORCA input library ( ), as well as a number of tutorials, jump-start guides, and video lessons that are available on the ORCA forum. ORCA is free of charge for academic users and distributed commercially to industry via the company FAccTs ( ORCA is supported by a very active users forum hosted at and is extensively documented in a >1300 page manual. Citation statistics indicate that ORCA is presently the second most used quantum chemistry program world-wide with a steep upward slope. 2 It has since evolved into a general-purpose quantum chemistry program with more than 40,000 academic users and quickly growing number of commercial users. The ORCA project was started in the mid 1990s as an in-house project to understand some features in the spectroscopy of open-shell transition metal complexes.

Module 7 quantum jumping two