Benchmark Many-Body GW and Bethe–Salpeter Calculations for Small Transition Metal Molecules

Beyond Electrons: Correlation and Self-Energy in Multicomponent Density Functional Theory

Post-Kohn-Sham methods are used to evaluate the ground-state correlation energy and the orbital self-energy of systems consisting of multiple flavors of different fermions. Starting from multicomponent density functional theory, suitable ways to arrive at the corresponding multicomponent random-phase approximation and the multicomponent Green's functionG W ${GW}$ approximation, including relativistic effects, are outlined. Given the importance of both of this methods in the development of modern Kohn-Sham density functional approximations, this work will provide a foundation to design advanced multicomponent density functional approximations. Additionally, theG W ${GW}$ quasiparticle energies are needed to study light-matter interactions with the Bethe-Salpeter equation.

Relativistic Fully Self-Consistent GW for Molecules: Total Energies and Ionization Potentials

The fully self-consistent GW (scGW) method with an iterative solution of the Dyson equation provides a consistent approach for describing the ground and excited states without any dependence on the mean-field reference. In this work, we present a relativistic version of scGW for molecules containing heavy elements using the exact two-component (X2C) Coulomb approximation. We benchmark SOC-81 data set containing closed shell heavy elements for the first ionization potential using the fully self-consistent GW as well as one-shot GW. The self-consistent GW provides superior results compared to G0W0 with PBE reference and comparable results to G0W0 with PBE0 while also removing the starting point dependence. The photoelectron spectra obtained at the X2C level demonstrate very good agreement with the experimental spectra. We also observe that scGW provides very good estimation of ionization potential for the inner d-shell orbitals. Additionally, using the well-conserved total energy, we investigate the equilibrium bond length and harmonic frequencies of a few halogen dimers using scGW. Overall, our findings demonstrate the applicability of the fully self-consistent GW method for accurate ionization potential, photoelectron spectra, and total energies in finite systems with heavy elements with a reasonable computational scaling.

Reference Vertical Excitation Energies for Transition Metal Compounds

To enrich and enhance the diversity of the quest database of highly accurate excitation energies [Véril, M.; et al. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev.: Comput. Mol. Sci. 2021, 11, e1517], we report vertical transition energies in transition metal compounds. Eleven diatomic molecules with a singlet or doublet ground state containing a fourth-row transition metal (CuCl, CuF, CuH, ScF, ScH, ScO, ScS, TiN, ZnH, ZnO, and ZnS) are considered, and the corresponding excitation energies are computed using high-level coupled-cluster (CC) methods, namely, CC3, CCSDT, CC4, and CCSDTQ, as well as multiconfigurational methods such as CASPT2 and NEVPT2. In many cases, to provide more comprehensive benchmark data, we also provide full configuration interaction estimates computed with the configuration interaction using a perturbative selection made iteratively (CIPSI) method. Based on these calculations, theoretical best estimates of the transition energies are established in both the aug-cc-pVDZ and aug-cc-pVTZ basis sets. This allows us to accurately assess the performance of the CC and multiconfigurational methods for this specific set of challenging transitions. Furthermore, comparisons with experimental data and previous theoretical results are also reported.

Two-Component GW Calculations: Cubic Scaling Implementation and Comparison of Vertex-Corrected and Partially Self-Consistent GW Variants

We report an all-electron, atomic orbital (AO)-based, two-component (2C) implementation of the GW approximation (GWA) for closed-shell molecules. Our algorithm is based on the space-time formulation of the GWA and uses analytical continuation (AC) of the self-energy, and pair-atomic density fitting (PADF) to switch between AO and auxiliary basis. By calculating the dynamical contribution to the GW self-energy at a quasi-one-component level, our 2C-GW algorithm is only about a factor of 2-3 slower than in the scalar relativistic case. Additionally, we present a 2C implementation of the simplest vertex correction to the self-energy, the statically screened G3W2 correction. Comparison of first ionization potentials (IPs) of a set of 67 molecules with heavy elements (a subset of the SOC81 set) calculated with our implementation against results from the WEST code reveals mean absolute deviations (MAD) of around 70 meV for G0W0@PBE and G0W0@PBE0. We check the accuracy of our AC treatment by comparison to full-frequency GW calculations, which shows that in the absence of multisolution cases, the errors due to AC are only minor. This implies that the main sources of the observed deviations between both implementations are the different single-particle bases and the pseudopotential approximation in the WEST code. Finally, we assess the performance of some (partially self-consistent) variants of the GWA for the calculation of first IPs by comparison to vertical experimental reference values. G0W0@PBE0 (25% exact exchange) and G0W0@BHLYP (50% exact exchange) perform best with mean absolute deviations (MAD) of about 200 meV. Explicit treatment of spin-orbit effects at the 2C level is crucial for systematic agreement with experiment. On the other hand, eigenvalue-only self-consistent GW (evGW) and quasi-particle self-consistent GW (qsGW) significantly overestimate the IPs. Perturbative G3W2 corrections increase the IPs and therefore improve the agreement with experiment in cases where G0W0 alone underestimates the IPs. With a MAD of only 140 meV, 2C-G0W0@PBE0 + G3W2 is in best agreement with the experimental reference values.

A Similarity Renormalization Group Approach to Green's Function Methods

The family of Green's function methods based on the GW approximation has gained popularity in the electronic structure theory thanks to its accuracy in weakly correlated systems combined with its cost-effectiveness. Despite this, self-consistent versions still pose challenges in terms of convergence. A recent study [Monino and Loos J. Chem. Phys. 2022, 156, 231101.] has linked these convergence issues to the intruder-state problem. In this work, a perturbative analysis of the similarity renormalization group (SRG) approach is performed on Green's function methods. The SRG formalism enables us to derive, from first-principles, the expression of a naturally static and Hermitian form of the self-energy that can be employed in quasiparticle self-consistent GW (qsGW) calculations. The resulting SRG-based regularized self-energy significantly accelerates the convergence of qsGW calculations, slightly improves the overall accuracy, and is straightforward to implement in existing code.

Practical Post-Kohn-Sham Methods for Time-Reversal Symmetry Breaking References

The applicability of reduced scaling algorithms based on auxiliary subspace methods for the correlation energy from the random phase approximation (RPA) as well as the correlation part of the self-energy obtained from the GW method is outlined for time-reversal symmetry breaking Kohn-Sham (KS) references. The updated algorithms allow for an efficient evaluation of RPA energies and GW quasiparticle energies for molecular systems with KS references that break time-reversal symmetry. The latter occur, for example, in magnetic fields. Furthermore, KS references for relativistic open-shell molecules also break time-reversal symmetry due to the single determinant ansatz used. Errors of the updated reduced-scaling algorithms are shown to be negligible compared to reference implementations, while the overall computational scaling is reduced by 2 orders of magnitude. Ionization energies obtained from the GW approximation are shown to be robust even for the electronically complicated group of trivalent lanthanoid ions. Starting from GW quasiparticle energies, it is subsequently shown that light-matter interactions of these systems can be calculated using the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE). Using the combined GW-BSE method, the absorption and emission spectra of a molecular europium(III) complex can be obtained including spin-orbit coupling.

Embedding vertex corrections in GW self-energy: Theory, implementation, and outlook

The vertex function (Γ) within the Green's function formalism encapsulates information about all higher-order electron-electron interaction beyond those mediated by density fluctuations. Herein, we present an efficient approach that embeds vertex corrections in the one-shot GW correlation self-energy for isolated and periodic systems. The vertex-corrected self-energy is constructed through the proposed separation-propagation-recombination procedure: the electronic Hilbert space is separated into an active space and its orthogonal complement denoted as the "rest;" the active component is propagated by a space-specific effective Hamiltonian different from the rest. The vertex corrections are introduced by a rescaled time-dependent nonlocal exchange interaction. The direct Γ correction to the self-energy is further updated by adjusting the rescaling factor in a self-consistent post-processing cycle. Our embedding method is tested mainly on donor-acceptor charge-transfer systems. The embedded vertex effects consistently and significantly correct the quasiparticle energies of the gap-edge states. The fundamental gap is generally improved by 1-3 eV upon the one-shot GW approximation. Furthermore, we provide an outlook for applications of (embedded) vertex corrections in calculations of extended solids.

Quasiparticle Self-Consistent GW-Bethe-Salpeter Equation Calculations for Large Chromophoric Systems

The GW-Bethe–Salpeter equation (BSE) method is promising for calculating the low-lying excitonic states of molecular systems. However, so far it has only been applied to rather small molecules and in the commonly implemented diagonal approximations to the electronic self-energy, it depends on a mean-field starting point. We describe here an implementation of the self-consistent and starting-point-independent quasiparticle self-consistent (qsGW)-BSE approach, which is suitable for calculations on large molecules. We herein show that eigenvalue-only self-consistency can lead to an unfaithful description of some excitonic states for chlorophyll dimers while the qsGW-BSE vertical excitation energies (VEEs) are in excellent agreement with spectroscopic experiments for chlorophyll monomers and dimers measured in the gas phase. Furthermore, VEEs from time-dependent density functional theory calculations tend to disagree with experimental values and using different range-separated hybrid (RSH) kernels does change the VEEs by up to 0.5 eV. We use the new qsGW-BSE implementation to calculate the lowest excitation energies of the six chromophores of the photosystem II (PSII) reaction center (RC) with nearly 2000 correlated electrons. Using more than 11,000 (6000) basis functions, the calculation could be completed in less than 5 (2) days on a single modern compute node. In agreement with previous TD-DFT calculations using RSH kernels on models that also do not include environmental effects, our qsGW-BSE calculations only yield states with local characters in the low-energy spectrum of the hexameric complex. Earlier works with RSH kernels have demonstrated that the protein environment facilitates the experimentally observed interchromophoric charge transfer. Therefore, future research will need to combine correlation effects beyond TD-DFT with an explicit treatment of environmental electrostatics.

Unphysical discontinuities, intruder states and regularization in GW methods

By recasting the non-linear frequency-dependent GW quasiparticle equation into a linear eigenvalue problem, we explain the appearance of multiple solutions and unphysical discontinuities in various physical quantities computed within the GW approximation. Considering the GW self-energy as an effective Hamiltonian, it is shown that these issues are key signatures of strong correlation in the (N ± 1)-electron states and can be directly related to the intruder state problem. A simple and efficient regularization procedure inspired by the similarity renormalization group is proposed to avoid such issues and speed up the convergence of partially self-consistent GW calculations.

Simplified GW/BSE Approach for Charged and Neutral Excitation Energies of Large Molecules and Nanomaterials

Inspired by Grimme's simplified Tamm-Dancoff density functional theory approach [Grimme, S. J. Chem. Phys. 2013, 138, 244104], we describe a simplified approach to excited-state calculations within the GW approximation to the self-energy and the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE), which we call sGW/sBSE. The primary simplification to the electron repulsion integrals yields the same structure as with tensor hypercontraction, such that our method has a storage requirement that grows quadratically with system size and computational timing that grows cubically with system size. The performance of sGW is tested on the ionization potential of the molecules in the GW100 test set, for which it differs from ab initio GW calculations by only 0.2 eV. The performance of sBSE (based on the sGW input) is tested on the excitation energies of molecules in Thiel's set, for which it differs from ab initio GW/BSE calculations by about 0.5 eV. As examples of the systems that can be routinely studied with sGW/sBSE, we calculate the band gap and excitation energy of hydrogen-passivated silicon nanocrystals with up to 2650 electrons in 4678 spatial orbitals and the absorption spectra of two large organic dye molecules with hundreds of atoms.

All-Electron BSE@GW Method for K-Edge Core Electron Excitation Energies

We present an accurate computational approach to calculate absolute K-edge core electron excitation energies as measured by X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Our approach employs an all-electron Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism based on GW quasiparticle energies (BSE@GW) using numeric atom-centered orbitals (NAOs). The BSE@GW method has become an increasingly popular method for the computation of neutral valence excitation energies of molecules. However, it was so far not applied to molecular K-edge excitation energies. We discuss the influence of different numerical approximations on the BSE@GW calculation and employ in our final setup (i) exact numeric algorithms for the frequency integration of the GW self-energy, (ii) G₀W₀ and BSE starting points with ∼50% of exact exchange, (iii) the Tamm-Dancoff approximation and (iv) relativistic corrections. We study the basis set dependence and convergence with common Gaussian-type orbital and NAO basis sets. We identify the importance of additional spatially confined basis functions as well as of diffuse augmenting basis functions. The accuracy of our BSE@GW method is assessed for a benchmark set of small organic molecules, previously used for benchmarking the equation-of-motion coupled cluster method [Peng et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput., 2015, 11, 4146], as well as the medium-sized dibenzothiophene (DBT) molecule. Our BSE@GW results for absolute excitation energies are in excellent agreement with the experiment, with a mean average error of only 0.63 eV for the benchmark set and with errors <1 eV for the DBT molecule.

Full-frequency dynamical Bethe-Salpeter equation without frequency and a study of double excitations

The Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) that results from the GW approximation to the self-energy is a frequency-dependent (nonlinear) eigenvalue problem due to the dynamically screened Coulomb interaction between electrons and holes. The computational time required for a numerically exact treatment of this frequency dependence is O(N6), where N is the system size. To avoid the common static screening approximation, we show that the full-frequency dynamical BSE can be exactly reformulated as a frequency-independent eigenvalue problem in an expanded space of single and double excitations. When combined with an iterative eigensolver and the density fitting approximation to the electron repulsion integrals, this reformulation yields a dynamical BSE algorithm whose computational time is O(N5), which we verify numerically. Furthermore, the reformulation provides direct access to excited states with dominant double excitation character, which are completely absent in the spectrum of the statically screened BSE. We study the 21Ag state of butadiene, hexatriene, and octatetraene and find that GW/BSE overestimates the excitation energy by about 1.5-2 eV and significantly underestimates the double excitation character.

NMR Coupling Constants Based on the Bethe-Salpeter Equation in the GW Approximation

We present the first steps to extend the Green's function GW method and the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) to molecular response properties such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) indirect spin-spin coupling constants. We discuss both a nonrelativistic one-component and a quasi-relativistic two-component formalism. The latter describes scalar-relativistic and spin-orbit effects and allows us to study heavy-element systems with reasonable accuracy. Efficiency is maintained by the application of the resolution of the identity approximation throughout. The performance is demonstrated using conventional central processing units (CPUs) and modern graphics processing units (GPUs) for molecules involving several thousand basis functions. Our results show that a large amount of Hartree-Fock exchange is vital to provide a sufficient Kohn-Sham starting point to compute the GW quasi-particle energies. As the GW-BSE approach is generally less accurate for triplet excitations or related properties such as the Fermi-contact interaction, the admixture of the Kohn-Sham correlation kernel through the contracted BSE (cBSE) method improves the results for NMR coupling constants. This leads to remarkable results when combined with the eigenvalue-only self-consistent variant (evGW) and Becke's half and half functional (BH&HLYP) or the CAM-QTP family. The developed methodology is used to calculate the Karplus curve of tin molecules, illustrating its applicability to extended chemically relevant molecules. Here, the GW-cBSE method improves upon the chosen BH&HLYP Kohn-Sham starting points.

Computing Charging and Polarization Energies of Small Organic Molecules Embedded into Amorphous Materials with Quantum Accuracy

The ionization potential, electron affinity, and cation/anion polarization energies (IP, EA, P⁽⁺⁾, P^(-)) of organic molecules determine injection barriers, charge carriers balance, doping efficiency, and light outcoupling in organic electronics devices, such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Computing IP and EA of isolated molecules is a common task for quantum chemistry methods. However, once molecules are embedded in an amorphous organic matrix, IP and EA values change, and accurate predictions become challenging. Here, we present a revised quantum embedding method [Friederich et al. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2014, 10 (9), 3720-3725] that accurately predicts the dielectric permittivity and ionization potentials in three test materials, NPB, TCTA, and C60, and allows straightforward interpretation of their nature. The method paves the way toward reliable virtual screening of amorphous organic semiconductors with targeted IP/EA, polarization energies, and relative dielectric permittivity.

Understanding the Structural and Electronic Properties of Photoactive Tungsten Oxide Nanoparticles from Density Functional Theory and GW Approaches

Tungsten trioxide (WO₃)-derived nanostructures have emerged recently as feasible semiconductors for photocatalytic purposes due to their visible-light harvesting that overcomes the drawbacks presented by TiO₂-derived nanoparticles (NPs). However, applications are still limited by the lack of fundamental knowledge at the nanoscale due to poor understanding of the physical processes that affect their photoactivity. To fill this gap, we report here a detailed computational study using a combined density functional theory (DFT)-GW scheme to investigate the electronic structure of realistic WO₃ NPs containing up to 1680 atoms. Different phases and morphologies are considered to provide reliable structure-property relationships. Upon proper benchmark of our DFT-GW methodology, we use this highly accurate approach to establish relevant rules for the design of photoactive WO₃ nanostructures by pointing out the most stable morphologies at the nanoscale and the appropriate size regime at which the photoactive efficiency is enhanced.

Assessing the Accuracy of Local Hybrid Density Functional Approximations for Molecular Response Properties

A comprehensive overview of the performance of local hybrid functionals for molecular properties like excited states, ionization potentials within the GW framework, polarizabilities, magnetizabilities, NMR chemical shifts, and NMR spin-spin coupling constants is presented. We apply the generalization of the kinetic energy, τ, with the paramagnetic current density to all magnetic properties and the excitation energies from time-dependent density functional theory. This restores gauge invariance for these properties. Different ansätze for local mixing functions such as the iso-orbital indicator, the correlation length, the Görling-Levy second-order limit, and the spin polarization are compared. For the latter, we propose a modified version of the corresponding hyper-generalized gradient approximation functional of Perdew, Staroverov, Tao, and Scuseria (PSTS) [Phys. Rev. A 2008, 78, 052513] to allow for a numerically stable evaluation of the exchange-correlation kernel and hyperkernel. The PSTS functional leads to a very consistent improvement compared to the related TPSSh functional. It is further shown that the "best" choice of the local mixing function depends on the studied property and molecular class. While functionals based on the iso-orbital indicator lead to rather accurate excitation energies and ionization energies, the results are less impressive for NMR properties, for which a considerable dependence on the considered molecular test set and nuclei is observed. Johnson's local hybrid functional based on the correlation length yields remarkable results for NMR shifts of compounds featuring heavy elements and also for the excitation energies of organic compounds.

Advanced First-Principle Modeling of Relativistic Ruddlesden—Popper Strontium Iridates

In this review, we provide a survey of the application of advanced first-principle methods on the theoretical modeling and understanding of novel electronic, optical, and magnetic properties of the spin-orbit coupled Ruddlesden–Popper series of iridates Srn+1IrnO3n+1 (n = 1, 2, and ∞). After a brief description of the basic aspects of the adopted methods (noncollinear local spin density approximation plus an on-site Coulomb interaction (LSDA+U), constrained random phase approximation (cRPA), GW, and Bethe–Salpeter equation (BSE)), we present and discuss select results. We show that a detailed phase diagrams of the metal–insulator transition and magnetic phase transition can be constructed by inspecting the evolution of electronic and magnetic properties as a function of Hubbard U, spin–orbit coupling (SOC) strength, and dimensionality n, which provide clear evidence for the crucial role played by SOC and U in establishing a relativistic (Dirac) Mott–Hubbard insulating state in Sr2IrO4 and Sr3Ir2O7. To characterize the ground-state phases, we quantify the most relevant energy scales fully ab initio—crystal field energy, Hubbard U, and SOC constant of three compounds—and discuss the quasiparticle band structures in detail by comparing GW and LSDA+U data. We examine the different magnetic ground states of structurally similar n = 1 and n = 2 compounds and clarify that the origin of the in-plane canted antiferromagnetic (AFM) state of Sr2IrO4 arises from competition between isotropic exchange and Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya (DM) interactions whereas the collinear AFM state of Sr3Ir2O7 is due to strong interlayer magnetic coupling. Finally, we report the dimensionality controlled metal–insulator transition across the series by computing their optical transitions and conductivity spectra at the GW+BSE level from the the quasi two-dimensional insulating n = 1 and 2 phases to the three-dimensional metallic n=∞ phase.

Photoelectron spectra of early 3d-transition metal dioxide molecular anions from GW calculations

Photoelectron spectra of early 3d-transition metal dioxide anions, ScO₂ ^-, TiO₂ ^-, VO₂ ^-, CrO₂ ^-, and MnO₂ ^-, are calculated using semilocal and hybrid density functional theory (DFT) and many-body perturbation theory within the GW approximation using one-shot perturbative and eigenvalue self-consistent formalisms. Different levels of theory are compared with each other and with available photoelectron spectra. We show that one-shot GW with a PBE0 starting point (G₀W₀@PBE0) consistently provides very good agreement for all experimentally measured binding energies (within 0.1 eV-0.2 eV or less). We attribute this to the success of PBE0 in mitigating self-interaction error and providing good quasiparticle wave functions, which renders a first-order perturbative GW correction effective. One-shot GW calculations with a Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) starting point do poorly in predicting electron removal energies by underbinding orbitals with typical errors near 1.5 eV. A higher exact exchange amount of 50% in the DFT starting point of one-shot GW does not provide very good agreement with experiment by overbinding orbitals with typical errors near 0.5 eV. While not as accurate as G₀W₀@PBE0, the G-only eigenvalue self-consistent GW scheme with W fixed to the PBE level provides a reasonably predictive level of theory (typical errors near 0.3 eV) to describe photoelectron spectra of these 3d-transition metal dioxide anions. Adding eigenvalue self-consistency also in W, on the other hand, worsens the agreement with experiment overall. Our findings on the performance of various GW methods are discussed in the context of our previous studies on other transition metal oxide molecular systems.

Quantum Information and Algorithms for Correlated Quantum Matter

Discoveries in quantum materials, which are characterized by the strongly quantum-mechanical nature of electrons and atoms, have revealed exotic properties that arise from correlations. It is the promise of quantum materials for quantum information science superimposed with the potential of new computational quantum algorithms to discover new quantum materials that inspires this Review. We anticipate that quantum materials to be discovered and developed in the next years will transform the areas of quantum information processing including communication, storage, and computing. Simultaneously, efforts toward developing new quantum algorithmic approaches for quantum simulation and advanced calculation methods for many-body quantum systems enable major advances toward functional quantum materials and their deployment. The advent of quantum computing brings new possibilities for eliminating the exponential complexity that has stymied simulation of correlated quantum systems on high-performance classical computers. Here, we review new algorithms and computational approaches to predict and understand the behavior of correlated quantum matter. The strongly interdisciplinary nature of the topics covered necessitates a common language to integrate ideas from these fields. We aim to provide this common language while weaving together fields across electronic structure theory, quantum electrodynamics, algorithm design, and open quantum systems. Our Review is timely in presenting the state-of-the-art in the field toward algorithms with nonexponential complexity for correlated quantum matter with applications in grand-challenge problems. Looking to the future, at the intersection of quantum information science and algorithms for correlated quantum matter, we envision seminal advances in predicting many-body quantum states and describing excitonic quantum matter and large-scale entangled states, a better understanding of high-temperature superconductivity, and quantifying open quantum system dynamics.

Low-Order Scaling G0W0 by Pair Atomic Density Fitting

We derive a low-scaling G0W0 algorithm for molecules using pair atomic density fitting (PADF) and an imaginary time representation of the Green's function and describe its implementation in the Slater type orbital (STO)-based Amsterdam density functional (ADF) electronic structure code. We demonstrate the scalability of our algorithm on a series of water clusters with up to 432 atoms and 7776 basis functions and observe asymptotic quadratic scaling with realistic threshold qualities controlling distance effects and basis sets of triple-ζ (TZ) plus double polarization quality. Also owing to a very small prefactor, a G0W0 calculation for the largest of these clusters takes only 240 CPU hours with these settings. We assess the accuracy of our algorithm for HOMO and LUMO energies in the GW100 database. With errors of 0.24 eV for HOMO energies on the quadruple-ζ level, our implementation is less accurate than canonical all-electron implementations using the larger def2-QZVP GTO-type basis set. Apart from basis set errors, this is related to the well-known shortcomings of the GW space-time method using analytical continuation techniques as well as to numerical issues of the PADF approach of accurately representing diffuse atomic orbital (AO) products. We speculate that these difficulties might be overcome by using optimized auxiliary fit sets with more diffuse functions of higher angular momenta. Despite these shortcomings, for subsets of medium and large molecules from the GW5000 database, the error of our approach using basis sets of TZ and augmented double-ζ (DZ) quality is decreasing with system size. On the augmented DZ level, we reproduce canonical, complete basis set limit extrapolated reference values with an accuracy of 80 meV on average for a set of 20 large organic molecules. We anticipate our algorithm, in its current form, to be very useful in the study of single-particle properties of large organic systems such as chromophores and acceptor molecules.

Electronic and Optical Properties of Small Metal Fluoride Clusters

We report a systematic investigation on the electronic and optical properties of the smallest stable clusters of alkaline-earth metal fluorides, namely, MgF₂, CaF₂, SrF₂, and BaF₂. For these clusters, we perform density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) calculations with a localized Gaussian basis set. For each molecule ((MF₂) _n , n = 1-3, M = Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba), we determine a series of molecular properties, namely, ground-state energies, fragmentation energies, electron affinities, ionization energies, fundamental energy gaps, optical absorption spectra, and exciton binding energies. We compare electronic and optical properties between clusters of different sizes with the same metal atom and between clusters of the same size with different metal atoms. From this analysis, it turns out that MgF₂ clusters have distinguished ground-state and excited-state properties with respect to the other fluoride molecules. Sizeable reductions of the optical onset energies and a consistent increase of excitonic effects are observed for all clusters under study with respect to the corresponding bulk systems. Possible consequences of the present results are discussed with respect to applied and fundamental research.

TURBOMOLE: Modular program suite for ab initio quantum-chemical and condensed-matter simulations

TURBOMOLE is a collaborative, multi-national software development project aiming to provide highly efficient and stable computational tools for quantum chemical simulations of molecules, clusters, periodic systems, and solutions. The TURBOMOLE software suite is optimized for widely available, inexpensive, and resource-efficient hardware such as multi-core workstations and small computer clusters. TURBOMOLE specializes in electronic structure methods with outstanding accuracy-cost ratio, such as density functional theory including local hybrids and the random phase approximation (RPA), GW-Bethe-Salpeter methods, second-order Møller-Plesset theory, and explicitly correlated coupled-cluster methods. TURBOMOLE is based on Gaussian basis sets and has been pivotal for the development of many fast and low-scaling algorithms in the past three decades, such as integral-direct methods, fast multipole methods, the resolution-of-the-identity approximation, imaginary frequency integration, Laplace transform, and pair natural orbital methods. This review focuses on recent additions to TURBOMOLE's functionality, including excited-state methods, RPA and Green's function methods, relativistic approaches, high-order molecular properties, solvation effects, and periodic systems. A variety of illustrative applications along with accuracy and timing data are discussed. Moreover, available interfaces to users as well as other software are summarized. TURBOMOLE's current licensing, distribution, and support model are discussed, and an overview of TURBOMOLE's development workflow is provided. Challenges such as communication and outreach, software infrastructure, and funding are highlighted.

Ab Initio Many-Body Perturbation Theory Calculations of the Electronic and Optical Properties of Cyclometalated Ir(III) Complexes

Cyclometalated Ir(III) compounds are the preferred choice as organic emitters in organic light-emitting diodes. In practice, the presence of the transition metal surrounded by carefully designed ligands allows fine-tuning of the emission frequency as well as good efficiency of the device. To support the development of new compounds, experimental measurements are generally compared with absorption and emission spectra obtained from ab initio calculations. The standard approach for these calculations is time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) with a hybrid exchange-correlation functional like B3LYP. Because of the size of these compounds, the application of more complex quantum chemistry approaches can be challenging. In this work, we used many-body perturbation theory approaches, in particular the GW approximation with the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) implemented in Gaussian basis sets, to calculate the quasiparticle properties and the absorption spectra of six cyclometalated Ir(III) complexes, going beyond TDDFT. In the presented results, we compared standard TDDFT simulations with BSE calculations performed on top of perturbative G₀W₀ and accounting for eigenvalue self-consistency. Moreover, in order to investigate in detail the effect of the DFT starting point, we concentrated on Ir(ppy)₃ and performed GW-BSE simulations starting from different DFT exchange-correlation potentials.

Practical GW scheme for electronic structure of 3d-transition-metal monoxide anions: ScO-, TiO-, CuO-, and ZnO. J Chem Phys 2019;151:134305. [PMID: 31594362 DOI: 10.1063/1.5118671]

The GW approximation to many-body perturbation theory is a reliable tool for describing charged electronic excitations, and it has been successfully applied to a wide range of extended systems for several decades using a plane-wave basis. However, the GW approximation has been used to test limited spectral properties of a limited set of finite systems (e.g., frontier orbital energies of closed-shell sp molecules) only for about a decade using a local-orbital basis. Here, we calculate the quasiparticle spectra of closed- and open-shell molecular anions with partially and completely filled 3d shells (shallow and deep 3d states, respectively), ScO^-, TiO^-, CuO^-, and ZnO^-, using various levels of GW theory, and compare them to experiments to evaluate the performance of the GW approximation on the electronic structure of small molecules containing 3d transition metals. We find that the G-only eigenvalue self-consistent GW scheme with W fixed to the PBE level (G_nW₀@PBE), which gives the best compromise between accuracy and efficiency for solids, also gives good results for both localized (d) and delocalized (sp) states of 3d-transition-metal oxide molecules. The success of G_nW₀@PBE in predicting electronic excitations in these systems reasonably well is likely due to the fortuitous cancellation effect between the overscreening of the Coulomb interaction by PBE and the underscreening by the neglect of vertex corrections. Together with the absence of the self-consistent field convergence error (e.g., spin contamination in open-shell systems) and the GW multisolution issue, the G_nW₀@PBE scheme gives the possibility to predict the electronic structure of complex real systems (e.g., molecule-solid and sp-d hybrid systems) accurately and efficiently.

Toward Efficient GW Calculations Using Numerical Atomic Orbitals: Benchmarking and Application to Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The use of atomic orbitals in Hedin's GW approximation provides, in principle, an inexpensive alternative to plane-wave basis sets, especially when modeling large molecules. However, benchmarking of the algorithms and basis sets is essential for a careful balance between cost and accuracy. In this paper, we present an implementation of the GW approximation using numerical atomic orbitals and a pseudopotential treatment of core electrons. The combination of a contour deformation technique with a one-shot extraction of quasiparticle energies provides an efficient scheme for many applications. The performance of the implementation with respect to the basis set convergence and the effect of the use of pseudopotentials has been tested for the 117 closed-shell molecules from the G2/97 test set and 24 larger acceptor molecules from another recently proposed test set. Moreover, to demonstrate the potential of our method, we compute the thermally averaged GW density of states of a large photochromic compound by sampling ab initio molecular dynamics trajectories at different temperatures. The computed thermal line widths indicate approximately twice as large electron-phonon couplings with GW than with standard DFT-GGA calculations. This is further confirmed using frozen-phonon calculations.

The GW Compendium: A Practical Guide to Theoretical Photoemission Spectroscopy

The GW approximation in electronic structure theory has become a widespread tool for predicting electronic excitations in chemical compounds and materials. In the realm of theoretical spectroscopy, the GW method provides access to charged excitations as measured in direct or inverse photoemission spectroscopy. The number of GW calculations in the past two decades has exploded with increased computing power and modern codes. The success of GW can be attributed to many factors: favorable scaling with respect to system size, a formal interpretation for charged excitation energies, the importance of dynamical screening in real systems, and its practical combination with other theories. In this review, we provide an overview of these formal and practical considerations. We expand, in detail, on the choices presented to the scientist performing GW calculations for the first time. We also give an introduction to the many-body theory behind GW, a review of modern applications like molecules and surfaces, and a perspective on methods which go beyond conventional GW calculations. This review addresses chemists, physicists and material scientists with an interest in theoretical spectroscopy. It is intended for newcomers to GW calculations but can also serve as an alternative perspective for experts and an up-to-date source of computational techniques.

Excitation Energies from the Single-Particle Green's Function with the GW Approximation

Quasi-particle energies are important in predicting molecular ionization energies and bulk band structures. The state-of-the-art method for quasi-particle energy calculations, particularly for bulk systems, is the GW approximation. For excited state calculations, one needs to go beyond the GW approximation. The Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) is the commonly used approach for bulk-system excited state calculations beyond the GW approximation, which is accurate but computationally cumbersome. In this Article, we develop a new method to extract excitation energies directly from the quasi-particle energies based on the GW approximation. Starting from the ( N - 1)-electron system, we are able to calculate molecular excitation energies with orbital energies at the GW level for HOMO excitations. Our calculations demonstrate that this method can accurately capture low-lying local excitations as well as charge transfer excitations in many molecular systems. Our method is shown to outperform the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) and are comparable with higher level excited state calculations, including the equation-of-motion couple cluster (EOM-CC) theory and the BSE, but with less computational effort. This new approach provides an efficient alternative to the BSE method for accurate excited state calculations.

Computational Approach to Molecular Catalysis by 3d Transition Metals: Challenges and Opportunities

Computational chemistry provides a versatile toolbox for studying mechanistic details of catalytic reactions and holds promise to deliver practical strategies to enable the rational in silico catalyst design. The versatile reactivity and nontrivial electronic structure effects, common for systems based on 3d transition metals, introduce additional complexity that may represent a particular challenge to the standard computational strategies. In this review, we discuss the challenges and capabilities of modern electronic structure methods for studying the reaction mechanisms promoted by 3d transition metal molecular catalysts. Particular focus will be placed on the ways of addressing the multiconfigurational problem in electronic structure calculations and the role of expert bias in the practical utilization of the available methods. The development of density functionals designed to address transition metals is also discussed. Special emphasis is placed on the methods that account for solvation effects and the multicomponent nature of practical catalytic systems. This is followed by an overview of recent computational studies addressing the mechanistic complexity of catalytic processes by molecular catalysts based on 3d metals. Cases that involve noninnocent ligands, multicomponent reaction systems, metal-ligand and metal-metal cooperativity, as well as modeling complex catalytic systems such as metal-organic frameworks are presented. Conventionally, computational studies on catalytic mechanisms are heavily dependent on the chemical intuition and expert input of the researcher. Recent developments in advanced automated methods for reaction path analysis hold promise for eliminating such human-bias from computational catalysis studies. A brief overview of these approaches is presented in the final section of the review. The paper is closed with general concluding remarks.

Screening mixing GW/Bethe-Salpeter approach for triplet states of organic molecules

We recently proposed a screening mixing many-body ansatz (Ziaei and Bredow 2017 Phys. Rev. B 96 195115) to decrease the typical overestimation of the Hartree-Fock based GW/Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) singlet-singlet excitation energies in molecular systems. Now we have evaluated the accuracy of the proposed scheme for triplet states of a set of 20 organic molecules known as the Thiel set. We show that by mixing different screenings into GW and BSE calculated within random phase approximation (in order to ensure best gap and an optimal exciton binding energy), the total mean absolute error of 0.59 eV in the standard Hartree-Fock based eigenvalue GW/BSE approach is reduced to 0.26 eV for 63 triplet states. We further demonstrate that the quasi-particle self-consistent GW/BSE approach in which orbitals and energies are updated in the Green's function and the dynamically screened interaction mostly and considerably underestimates the excitation energies as shown for a few molecules.

Combining Wave Function Methods with Density Functional Theory for Excited States

We review state-of-the-art electronic structure methods based both on wave function theory (WFT) and density functional theory (DFT). Strengths and limitations of both the wave function and density functional based approaches are discussed, and modern attempts to combine these two methods are presented. The challenges in modeling excited-state chemistry using both single-reference and multireference methods are described. Topics covered include background, combining density functional theory with single-configuration wave function theory, generalized Kohn-Sham (KS) theory, global hybrids, range-separated hybrids, local hybrids, using KS orbitals in many-body theory (including calculations of the self-energy and the GW approximation), Bethe-Salpeter equation, algorithms to accelerate GW calculations, combining DFT with multiconfigurational WFT, orbital-dependent correlation functionals based on multiconfigurational WFT, building multiconfigurational wave functions from KS configurations, adding correlation functionals to multiconfiguration self-consistent-field (MCSCF) energies, combining DFT with configuration-interaction singles by means of time-dependent DFT, using range separation to combine DFT with MCSCF, embedding multiconfigurational WFT in DFT, and multiconfiguration pair-density functional theory.

Many-body perturbation theory for understanding optical excitations in organic molecules and solids

Semiconductors composed of organic molecules are promising as components for flexible and inexpensive optoelectronic devices, with many recent studies aimed at understanding their electronic and optical properties. In particular, computational modeling of these complex materials has provided new understanding of the underlying properties which give rise to their excited-state phenomena. This article provides an overview of recent many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) studies of optical excitations within organic molecules and solids. We discuss the accuracy of MBPT within the GW/BSE approach in predicting excitation energies and absorption spectra, and assess the impact of two commonly used approximations, the DFT starting point and the Tamm-Dancoff approximation. Moreover, we summarize studies that elucidate the role of solid-state structure on the nature of excitons in organic crystals. These studies show that a rich physical understanding of organic materials can be obtained from GW/BSE.

Toward GW Calculations on Thousands of Atoms

The GW approximation of many-body perturbation theory is an accurate method for computing electron addition and removal energies of molecules and solids. In a canonical implementation, however, its computational cost is [Formula: see text] in the system size N, which prohibits its application to many systems of interest. We present a full-frequency GW algorithm in a Gaussian-type basis, whose computational cost scales with N² to N³. The implementation is optimized for massively parallel execution on state-of-the-art supercomputers and is suitable for nanostructures and molecules in the gas, liquid or condensed phase, using either pseudopotentials or all electrons. We validate the accuracy of the algorithm on the GW100 molecular test set, finding mean absolute deviations of 35 meV for ionization potentials and 27 meV for electron affinities. Furthermore, we study the length-dependence of quasiparticle energies in armchair graphene nanoribbons of up to 1734 atoms in size, and compute the local density of states across a nanoscale heterojunction.

The Bethe–Salpeter equation in chemistry: relations with TD-DFT, applications and challenges

We review the Bethe–Salpeter formalism and analyze its performances for the calculation of the excited state properties of molecular systems.

Optimized virtual orbital subspace for faster GW calculations in localized basis

The popularity of the GW approximation to the self-energy to access the quasiparticle energies of molecules is constantly increasing. As the other methods addressing the electronic correlation, the GW self-energy unfortunately shows a very slow convergence with respect to the basis complexity, which precludes the calculation of accurate quasiparticle energies for large molecules. Here we propose a method to mitigate this issue that relies on two steps: (i) the definition of a reduced virtual orbital subspace, thanks to a much smaller basis set; (ii) the account of the remainder through the simpler one-ring approximation to the self-energy. We assess the quality of the corrected quasiparticle energies for simple molecules, and finally we show an application to large graphene chunks to demonstrate the numerical efficiency of the scheme.

Is the Bethe-Salpeter Formalism Accurate for Excitation Energies? Comparisons with TD-DFT, CASPT2, and EOM-CCSD

Developing ab initio approaches able to provide accurate excited-state energies at a reasonable computational cost is one of the biggest challenges in theoretical chemistry. In that framework, the Bethe-Salpeter equation approach, combined with the GW exchange-correlation self-energy, which maintains the same scaling with system size as TD-DFT, has recently been the focus of a rapidly increasing number of applications in molecular chemistry. Using a recently proposed set encompassing excitation energies of many kinds [J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2016, 7, 586-591], we investigate here the performances of BSE/GW. We compare these results to CASPT2, EOM-CCSD, and TD-DFT data and show that BSE/GW provides an accuracy comparable to the two wave function methods. It is particularly remarkable that the BSE/GW is equally efficient for valence, Rydberg, and charge-transfer excitations. In contrast, it provides a poor description of triplet excited states, for which EOM-CCSD and CASPT2 clearly outperform BSE/GW. This contribution therefore supports the use of the Bethe-Salpeter approach for spin-conserving transitions.

Accurate description of the electronic structure of organic semiconductors by GW methods

Electronic properties associated with charged excitations, such as the ionization potential (IP), the electron affinity (EA), and the energy level alignment at interfaces, are critical parameters for the performance of organic electronic devices. To computationally design organic semiconductors and functional interfaces with tailored properties for target applications it is necessary to accurately predict these properties from first principles. Many-body perturbation theory is often used for this purpose within the GW approximation, where G is the one particle Green's function and W is the dynamically screened Coulomb interaction. Here, the formalism of GW methods at different levels of self-consistency is briefly introduced and some recent applications to organic semiconductors and interfaces are reviewed.

Benchmark of Bethe-Salpeter for Triplet Excited-States

We have evaluated the accuracy of the Bethe-Salpeter singlet-triplet transition energies as well as singlet-triplet and triplet-triplet splittings for 20 organic molecules, using as reference the CC3 values determined by Thiel and co-workers with both the TZVP and aug-cc-pVTZ atomic basis sets. Our excitation energies are obtained on the basis of GW quasiparticle energy levels that are self-consistently converged with respect to the starting DFT eigenvalues. In its current form, BSE/GW is often unable to provide a balanced description of both singlet and triplet excited-states. While the singlet-singlet and triplet-triplet energy separations are obtained accurately, triplets are located too close in energy from the ground-state, by typically -0.55 eV when using standard functionals to generate the starting eigenstates. Applying the Tamm-Dancoff approximation upshifts the BSE triplet energies and allows reducing this error to ca. -0.40 eV, while using M06-HF eigenstates allows a further increase and hence a reduction of the error for triplet states, but at the cost of larger errors for the singlet excited-states. At this stage, the most accurate TD-DFT estimates therefore remain competitive for computing singlet-triplet transition energies. Indeed, with M06-2X, irrespective of the application or not of the Tamm-Dancoff approximation and of the selected atomic basis set, the deviations obtained with TD-DFT are rather small.

Bethe-Salpeter study of cationic dyes: Comparisons with ADC(2) and TD-DFT

We present a theoretical investigation of the excited-state properties of a large series of structurally diverse arylcarbonium derivatives that are known to be challenging for theoretical models. More specifically, we compare the pros and cons of TD-DFT (TD-M06-2X), ADC(2), and BSE/GW approaches for a large panel of compounds, using two different solvent models. Both 0-0 and vertical transition energies are considered and compared to the experimental values. All approaches reasonably reproduce the auxochromic and acidochromic shifts, although in most cases both TD-DFT and BSE/GW return larger correlation with experimental values than ADC(2) for these shifts. In contrast, the absolute transition energies obtained with ADC(2) tend to be closer to the measurements, TD-DFT using the M06-2X functional largely overestimating the experimental references (by ca. 0.5 eV), and BSE/GW providing intermediate values. In addition, we show that the selected solvent model has a significant impact on the results, the corrected linear-response approach providing larger transition energies than its linear-response counterpart.