In a Geometry Optimization (or Transition State search) the Hessian matrix - second derivatives of the energy with respect to changes in coordinates - is updated while the program steps around in an attempt to find the (local) energy minimum. The quality of the initial Hessian may have a considerable impact on the required number of steps to reach geometric convergence.
By default the initial Hessian is read from a restart file (see the key RESTART) if a restart file is present. Otherwise it is constructed from a force field [11] that is implemented in the program. In case of the old branch of optimization one can modify this with the key HESSDIAG. With the new branch of optimization it is possible to read an Hessian from an input file, see subkey INITHESS of the key GEOMETRY.
