Optimized Pair Natural Orbitals for the Coupled Cluster Methods

Range-separated density functional theory using multiresolution analysis and quantum computing

Quantum computers are expected to outperform classical computers for specific problems in quantum chemistry. Such calculations remain expensive, but costs can be lowered through the partition of the molecular system. In the present study, partition was achieved with range-separated density functional theory (RS-DFT). The use of RS-DFT reduces both the basis set size and the active space size dependence of the ground state energy in comparison with the use of wave function theory (WFT) alone. The utilization of pair natural orbitals (PNOs) in place of canonical molecular orbitals (MOs) results in more compact qubit Hamiltonians. To test this strategy, a basis-set independent framework, known as multiresolution analysis (MRA), was employed to generate PNOs. Tests were conducted with the variational quantum eigensolver for a number of molecules. The results show that the proposed approach reduces the number of qubits needed to reach a target energy accuracy.

Direct Determination of Optimal Real-Space Orbitals for Correlated Electronic Structure of Molecules

We demonstrate how to determine numerically nearly exact orthonormal orbitals that are optimal for the evaluation of the energy of arbitrary (correlated) states of atoms and molecules by minimization of the energy Lagrangian. Orbitals are expressed in real space using a multiresolution spectral element basis that is refined adaptively to achieve the user-specified target precision while avoiding the ill-conditioning issues that plague AO basis set expansions traditionally used for correlated models of molecular electronic structure. For light atoms, the orbital solver, in conjunction with a variational electronic structure model [selected Configuration Interaction (CI)] provides energies of comparable precision to a state-of-the-art atomic CI solver. The computed electronic energies of atoms and molecules are significantly more accurate than the counterparts obtained with the orbital sets of the same rank expanded in Gaussian AO bases, and can be determined even when linear dependence issues preclude the use of the AO bases. It is feasible to optimize more than 100 fully correlated numerical orbitals on a single computer node, and significant room exists for additional improvement. These findings suggest that real-space orbital representations might be the preferred alternative to AO representations for high-end models of correlated electronic states of molecules and materials.

Exploring the Accuracy Limits of PNO-Based Local Coupled-Cluster Calculations for Transition-Metal Complexes

While the domain-based local pair natural orbital coupled-cluster method with singles, doubles, and perturbative triples (DLPNO-CCSD(T)) has proven instrumental for computing energies and properties of large and complex systems accurately, calculations on first-row transition metals with a complex electronic structure remain challenging. In this work, we identify and address the two main error sources that influence the DLPNO-CCSD(T) accuracy in this context, namely, (i) correlation effects from the 3s and 3p semicore orbitals and (ii) dynamic correlation-induced orbital relaxation (DCIOR) effects that are not described by the local MP2 guess. We present a computational strategy that allows us to completely eliminate the DLPNO error associated with semicore correlation effects, while increasing, at the same time, the efficiency of the method. As regards the DCIOR effects, we introduce a diagnostic for estimating the deviation between DLPNO-CCSD(T) and canonical CCSD(T) for systems with significant orbital relaxation.

Basis Set Limit CCSD(T) Energies for Extended Molecules via a Reduced-Cost Explicitly Correlated Approach

Several approximations are introduced and tested to reduce the computational expenses of the explicitly correlated coupled-cluster singles and doubles with perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] method for both closed and open-shell species. First, the well-established frozen natural orbital (FNO) technique is adapted to explicitly correlated CC approaches. Second, our natural auxiliary function (NAF) scheme is employed to reduce the size of the auxiliary basis required for the density fitting approximation regularly used in explicitly correlated calculations. Third, a new approach, termed the natural auxiliary basis (NAB) approximation, is proposed to decrease the size of the auxiliary basis needed for the expansion of the explicitly correlated geminals. The performance of the above approximations and that of the combined FNO-NAF-NAB approach are tested for atomization and reaction energies. Our results show that overall speedups of 7-, 5-, and 3-times can be achieved with double-, triple-, and quadruple-ζ basis sets, respectively, without any loss in accuracy. The new method can provide, e.g., reaction energies and barrier heights well within chemical accuracy for molecules with more than 40 atoms within a few days using a few dozen processor cores, and calculations with 50+ atoms are still feasible. These routinely affordable computations considerably extend the reach of explicitly correlated CCSD(T).

The many-body electronic interactions of Fe(II)–porphyrin

Fe(II)–porphyrin complexes exhibit a diverse range of electronic interactions between the metal and macrocycle. Herein, the incremental full configuration interaction method is applied to the entire space of valence orbitals of a Fe(II)–porphyrin model using a modest basis set. A novel visualization framework is proposed to analyze individual many-body contributions to the correlation energy, providing detailed maps of this complex’s highly correlated electronic structure. This technique is used to parse the numerous interactions of two low-lying triplet states (3A2g and 3Eg) and to show that strong metal d–d and macrocycle π–π orbital interactions preferentially stabilize the 3A2g state. d–π interactions, on the other hand, preferentially stabilize the 3Eg state and primarily appear when correlating six electrons at a time. Ultimately, the Fe(II)–porphyrin model’s full set of 88 valence electrons are correlated in 275 orbitals, showing the interactions up to the 4-body level, which covers the great majority of correlations in this system.

From NWChem to NWChemEx: Evolving with the Computational Chemistry Landscape

Since the advent of the first computers, chemists have been at the forefront of using computers to understand and solve complex chemical problems. As the hardware and software have evolved, so have the theoretical and computational chemistry methods and algorithms. Parallel computers clearly changed the common computing paradigm in the late 1970s and 80s, and the field has again seen a paradigm shift with the advent of graphical processing units. This review explores the challenges and some of the solutions in transforming software from the terascale to the petascale and now to the upcoming exascale computers. While discussing the field in general, NWChem and its redesign, NWChemEx, will be highlighted as one of the early codesign projects to take advantage of massively parallel computers and emerging software standards to enable large scientific challenges to be tackled.

Accurate Reduced-Cost CCSD(T) Energies: Parallel Implementation, Benchmarks, and Large-Scale Applications

The accurate and systematically improvable frozen natural orbital (FNO) and natural auxiliary function (NAF) cost-reducing approaches are combined with our recent coupled-cluster singles, doubles, and perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] implementations. Both of the closed- and open-shell FNO-CCSD(T) codes benefit from OpenMP parallelism, completely or partially integral-direct density-fitting algorithms, checkpointing, and hand-optimized, memory- and operation count effective implementations exploiting all permutational symmetries. The closed-shell CCSD(T) code requires negligible disk I/O and network bandwidth, is MPI/OpenMP parallel, and exhibits outstanding peak performance utilization of 50-70% up to hundreds of cores. Conservative FNO and NAF truncation thresholds benchmarked for challenging reaction, atomization, and ionization energies of both closed- and open-shell species are shown to maintain 1 kJ/mol accuracy against canonical CCSD(T) for systems of 31-43 atoms even with large basis sets. The cost reduction of up to an order of magnitude achieved extends the reach of FNO-CCSD(T) to systems of 50-75 atoms (up to 2124 atomic orbitals) with triple- and quadruple-ζ basis sets, which is unprecedented without local approximations. Consequently, a considerably larger portion of the chemical compound space can now be covered by the practically "gold standard" quality FNO-CCSD(T) method using affordable resources and about a week of wall time. Large-scale applications are presented for organocatalytic and transition-metal reactions as well as noncovalent interactions. Possible applications for benchmarking local CCSD(T) methods, as well as for the accuracy assessment or parametrization of less complete models, for example, density functional approximations or machine learning potentials, are also outlined.

PNO++: Perturbed Pair Natural Orbitals for Coupled Cluster Linear Response Theory

Reduced-scaling methods are needed to make accurate and systematically improvable coupled cluster linear response methods for the calculation of molecular properties tractable for large molecules. In this paper, we examine the perturbed pair natural orbital-based PNO++ approach that creates an orbital space optimized for response properties derived from a lower-cost field-perturbed density matrix. We analyze truncation errors in correlation energies, dynamic polarizabilities, and specific rotations from a coupled cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) reference. We find that incorporating a fixed number of orbitals from the pair natural orbital (PNO) space into the PNO++ method-a new method presented here, the "combined PNO++" approach-recovers accuracy in the CCSD correlation energy while preserving the well-behaved convergence behavior of the PNO++ method for linear response properties.

Explicitly correlated coupled cluster method for accurate treatment of open-shell molecules with hundreds of atoms

We present a near-linear scaling formulation of the explicitly correlated coupled-cluster singles and doubles with the perturbative triples method [CCSD(T)_F12¯] for high-spin states of open-shell species. The approach is based on the conventional open-shell CCSD formalism [M. Saitow et al., J. Chem. Phys. 146, 164105 (2017)] utilizing the domain local pair-natural orbitals (DLPNO) framework. The use of spin-independent set of pair-natural orbitals ensures exact agreement with the closed-shell formalism reported previously, with only marginally impact on the cost (e.g., the open-shell formalism is only 1.5 times slower than the closed-shell counterpart for the C₁₆₀H₃₂₂ n-alkane, with the measured size complexity of ≈1.2). Evaluation of coupled-cluster energies near the complete-basis-set (CBS) limit for open-shell systems with more than 550 atoms and 5000 basis functions is feasible on a single multi-core computer in less than 3 days. The aug-cc-pVTZ DLPNO-CCSD(T)_F12¯ contribution to the heat of formation for the 50 largest molecules among the 348 core combustion species benchmark set [J. Klippenstein et al., J. Phys. Chem. A 121, 6580-6602 (2017)] had root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) from the extrapolated CBS CCSD(T) reference values of 0.3 kcal/mol. For a more challenging set of 50 reactions involving small closed- and open-shell molecules [G. Knizia et al., J. Chem. Phys. 130, 054104 (2009)], the aug-cc-pVQ(+d)Z DLPNO-CCSD(T)_F12¯ yielded a RMSD of ∼0.4 kcal/mol with respect to the CBS CCSD(T) estimate.