Linear scaling computation of the Fock matrix. VII. Parallel computation of the Coulomb matrix

Intermediate electrostatic field for the elongation method

A simple way to improve the accuracy of the fragmentation methods is proposed. The formalism was applied to the elongation (ELG) method at restricted open-shell Hartree-Fock (ROHF) level of theory. The α-helix conformer of polyglycine was taken as a model system. The modified ELG method includes a simplified electrostatic field resulting from point-charge distribution of the system's environment. In this way the long-distance polarization is approximately taken into account. The field attenuates during the ELG process to eventually disappear when the final structure is reached. The point-charge distributions for each ELG step are obtained from charge sensitivity analysis (CSA) in force-field atoms resolution. The presence of the intermediate field improves the accuracy of ELG calculations. The errors in total energy and its kinetic and potential contributions are reduced by at least one-order of magnitude. In addition the SCF convergence of ROHF scheme is improved.

O(N) methods in electronic structure calculations

Linear-scaling methods, or O(N) methods, have computational and memory requirements which scale linearly with the number of atoms in the system, N, in contrast to standard approaches which scale with the cube of the number of atoms. These methods, which rely on the short-ranged nature of electronic structure, will allow accurate, ab initio simulations of systems of unprecedented size. The theory behind the locality of electronic structure is described and related to physical properties of systems to be modelled, along with a survey of recent developments in real-space methods which are important for efficient use of high-performance computers. The linear-scaling methods proposed to date can be divided into seven different areas, and the applicability, efficiency and advantages of the methods proposed in these areas are then discussed. The applications of linear-scaling methods, as well as the implementations available as computer programs, are considered. Finally, the prospects for and the challenges facing linear-scaling methods are discussed.

Aromatic borozene

Based on our comprehensive theoretical investigation and known experimental results for small boron clusters, we predict the existence of a novel aromatic inorganic molecule, B12H6. This molecule, which we refer to as borozene, has remarkably similar properties to the well-known benzene. Borozene is planar, possesses a large first excitation energy, D3hsymmetry, and more importantly is aromatic. Furthermore, the calculated anisotropy of the magnetic susceptibility of borozene is three times larger in absolute value than for benzene. Finally, we show that borozene molecules may be fused together to give larger aromatic compounds with even larger anisotropic susceptibilities.

Molecular potential energy surfaces constructed from interpolation of systematic fragment surfaces

A systematic method for approximating the ab initio electronic energy of molecules from the energies of molecular fragments has previously been presented. Here it is shown that this approach provides a feasible, systematic method for constructing a global molecular potential energy surface (PES) for reactions of a moderate-sized molecule from the corresponding surfaces for small molecular fragments. The method is demonstrated by construction of PESs for the reactions of a hydrogen atom with propane and n-pentane.

Parallel algorithm for the computation of the Hartree-Fock exchange matrix: Gas phase and periodic parallel ONX

In this paper we present an efficient parallelization of the ONX algorithm for linear computation of the Hartree-Fock exchange matrix [J. Chem. Phys. 106, 9708 (1997)]. The method used is based on the equal time (ET) partitioning recently introduced [J. Chem. Phys. 118, 9128 (2003)] and [J. Chem. Phys. 121, 6608 (2004)]. ET exploits the slow variation of the density matrix between self-consistent-field iterations to achieve load balance. The method is presented and some benchmark calculations are discussed for gas phase and periodic systems with up to 128 processors. The current parallel ONX code is able to deliver up to 77% overall efficiency for a cluster of 50 water molecules on 128 processors (2.56 processors per heavy atom) and up to 87% for a box of 64 water molecules (two processors per heavy atom) with periodic boundary conditions.

Accuracy and efficiency of electronic energies from systematic molecular fragmentation

A systematic method for approximating the ab initio electronic energy of molecules from the energies of molecular fragments is tested on a large sample of typical organic molecular structures. The detailed methods, including some additional refinements for molecular rings and long range interactions, are described. The accuracy and computational efficiency of the systematic hierarchy of methods are reported.

Efficient implementation of the fast multipole method

A number of computational techniques are described that reduce the effort related to the continuous fast multipole method, used for the evaluation of Coulomb matrix elements as needed in Hartree-Fock and density functional theories. A new extent definition for Gaussian charge distributions is proposed, as well as a new way of dividing distributions into branches. Also, a new approach for estimating the error caused by truncation of multipole expansions is presented. It is found that the use of dynamically truncated multipole expansions gives a speedup of a factor of 10 in the work required for multipole interactions, compared to the case when all interactions are computed using a fixed multipole expansion order. Results of benchmark calculations on three-dimensional systems are reported, demonstrating the usefulness of our present implementation of the fast multipole method.

Molecular fractionation with conjugated caps density matrix with pairwise interaction correction for protein energy calculation

Pairwise interaction correction (PIC) is introduced to account for electron density polarization due to short-range interactions such as hydrogen bonding and close contact between molecular fragments in the molecular fractionation with conjugated caps density matrix (MFCC-DM) approach for energy calculation of protein and other polymers [Chen et al., J. Chem. Phys. 122, 184105 (2005)]. With this PIC, the accuracy of the calculated protein energy and other electronic properties are improved, and the MFCC approach can be applied to study real proteins with short-range structural complexity. In the present MFCC-DM-PIC approach, the short-range interresidual interactions are represented by a pair of small molecules (interacting units) which are made from the two residues that fall within a certain distance criterion. The density matrices of fragments, concaps, interacting units and pairs are calculated by conventional Hartree-Fock or density functional theory methods and are combined to construct the full density matrix which is finally employed to calculate the total energy, electron density, electrostatic potential, dipole moment, etc., of the protein. Numerical tests on seven conformationally varied peptides are presented to demonstrate the accuracy of the MFCC-DM-PIC method.

Parallelization of the deMon2k code

The parallelization of the LCGTO-KS-DFT code deMon2k is presented. The parallelization of the three-center electron repulsion integrals, the numerical integration using a direct grid algorithm and the matrix multiplication and diagonalization are described. The efficiency of the parallelization is analyzed by selected benchmark calculations. It is shown that geometry optimizations of systems with more than 8,000 basis functions are feasible on cluster architectures.

An efficient approach for ab initio energy calculation of biopolymers

We present a new method for efficient total-energy calculation of biopolymers using the density-matrix (DM) scheme based on the molecular fractionation with conjugate caps (MFCC) approach. In this MFCC-DM method, a biopolymer such as a protein is partitioned into properly capped fragments whose density matrices are calculated by conventional ab initio methods which are then assembled to construct the full system density matrix. The assembled full density matrix is then employed to calculate the total energy and dipole moment of the protein using Hartree-Fock or density-functional theory methods. Using this MFCC-DM method, the self-consistent-field procedure for solving the full Hamiltonian problem is avoided and an efficient approach for ab initio energy calculation of biopolymers is achieved. Two implementations of the approach are presented in this paper. Systematic numerical studies are carried out on a series of extended polyglycines CH3CO-(GLY)n-NHCH3(n = 3-25) and excellent results are obtained.

Approximateab initioenergies by systematic molecular fragmentation

A scheme is introduced for generating a hierarchy of molecular fragmentations by which the total electronic energy can be approximated from the energies of the fragments. Higher levels in the hierarchy produce molecular fragments of larger size and approximate the total electronic energy more reliably. A correction to account for nonbonded interactions is also presented. The accuracy of the approach is tested for a number of examples, and shown to be essentially independent of the level of ab initio theory employed. The computational cost increases linearly with the size of the molecule.