A systematic benchmark of the ab initio Bethe-Salpeter equation approach for low-lying optical excitations of small organic molecules

BSE@GW Prediction of Charge Transfer Exciton in Molecular Complexes: Assessment of Self-Energy and Exchange-Correlation Dependence

The Bethe-Salpeter equation using the GW approximation to the self-energy (BSE@GW) is a computationally attractive method for studying electronic excitation from first principles within the many-body Green's function theory framework. We examine its dependence on the underlying exchange-correlation (XC) approximation as well as on the GW approximation for predicting the charge transfer exciton formation at representative type-II interfaces between molecular systems of tetrachloro-1,2-benzoquinone (TCBQ) and acene derivatives. For the XC approximation, we consider several widely used generalized gradient approximation (GGA) and hybrid GGA functionals. For the GW self-energy approximation, we examine the recently proposed renormalized singles approach by Yang and coauthors [J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2019, 10 (3), 447-452; J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2022, 18, 7570-7585] in addition to other commonly employed approximated GW schemes. We demonstrate a reliable prediction of the charge transfer exciton within the BSE@GW level of theory.

Quantum-Quantum and Quantum-Quantum-Classical Schemes for Near-Gap Excitations with Projection-Based-Embedded GW-Bethe-Salpeter Equation

We present quantum-quantum and quantum-quantum-classical schemes based on many-body Green's functions theory in the GW approximation with the Bethe-Salpeter equation (GW-BSE) employing projection-based-embedding (PbE). Such approaches allow defining active and inactive subsystems of larger, complex molecular systems, with only the smaller active subsystem being explicitly treated by GW-BSE offering significant computational advantages. However, as PbE can modify the single-particle states in the Kohn-Sham (KS) ground state calculation and screening effects from the inactive region are not automatically included in GW-BSE, results from such PbE-GW-BSE calculations can deviate from a full-system reference. Here, we scrutinize in detail, e.g., the individual and combined effects of different choices of active regions, the influence of omitting the screening from the inactive region, and strategies for basis set truncation on frontier orbital and near-gap electron-hole excitation energies. As prototypical systems, we consider a diketopyrrolopyrrole bicyclic ring including side-chains, a polarity-sensitive dye (prodan) in aqueous environment, and a π-stacked dimer of benzene and tetracyanoethylene in water, respectively, covering a variety of excitation characters in molecular systems with complex chemical environments and photoinduced processes. Our results suggest that to obtain agreement of approximately 0.1 eV between near-gap excitation energies from embedded and full calculations, the active region should be chosen based on the Mulliken population of the full highest-occupied molecular orbital and that careful benchmarking should be done on the KS level before the actual GW-BSE steps when basis set truncation is used. We find that PbE-GW-BSE offers significant reductions in computation times and, more importantly, memory requirements, making calculations for considerably larger systems tractable.

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.

Computational Discovery of Intermolecular Singlet Fission Materials Using Many-Body Perturbation Theory

Intermolecular singlet fission (SF) is the conversion of a photogenerated singlet exciton into two triplet excitons residing on different molecules. SF has the potential to enhance the conversion efficiency of solar cells by harvesting two charge carriers from one high-energy photon, whose surplus energy would otherwise be lost to heat. The development of commercial SF-augmented modules is hindered by the limited selection of molecular crystals that exhibit intermolecular SF in the solid state. Computational exploration may accelerate the discovery of new SF materials. The GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation (GW+BSE) within the framework of many-body perturbation theory is the current state-of-the-art method for calculating the excited-state properties of molecular crystals with periodic boundary conditions. In this Review, we discuss the usage of GW+BSE to assess candidate SF materials as well as its combination with low-cost physical or machine learned models in materials discovery workflows. We demonstrate three successful strategies for the discovery of new SF materials: (i) functionalization of known materials to tune their properties, (ii) finding potential polymorphs with improved crystal packing, and (iii) exploring new classes of materials. In addition, three new candidate SF materials are proposed here, which have not been published previously.

Theoretical Study on the Optoelectronic Properties of Merocyanine-Dyes

Merocyanines, as prototypes of highly polar π-conjugated molecules, have been intensively investigated for their self-assembly and optoelectronic properties, both experimentally and theoretically. However, an accurate description of their structural and electronic properties remains challenging for quantum-chemical methods. We assessed several theoretical approaches, TD-DFT, GW-BSE, STEOM-DLPNO-CCSD, and CASSCF/NEVPT2-FIC for their reliability in reproducing optoelectronic properties of a series of donor/acceptor (D/A) merocyanines, focusing on the first excitation energy. Additionally, we tested an all-electron perturbative method based on time-dependent coupled-perturbed density functional theory, denoted as TDCP-DFT. Particular focus was set on direct and indirect solvent effects, which affect excited-state energies by electrostatic interaction and molecular geometry. The molecular configuration space was sampled at the semiempirical tight-binding level. Our results corroborate previous investigations, showing that the S0 - S1 excitation energy strongly depends on the merocyanine molecular structure and the dielectric constant of the solvent. We found significant effects of the polar solution environment on the geometry of the merocyanines, which strongly affect the calculated excitation energies. Taking these effects into account, the best agreement between calculated and measured excitation energies was obtained with TDCP-DFT and GW-BSE. We also calculated excitation energies of molecular crystals at the TDCP-DFT level and compared the results to the corresponding monomers.

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.

Computational Approaches for Organic Semiconductors: From Chemical and Physical Understanding to Predicting New Materials

While a complete understanding of organic semiconductor (OSC) design principles remains elusive, computational methods─ranging from techniques based in classical and quantum mechanics to more recent data-enabled models─can complement experimental observations and provide deep physicochemical insights into OSC structure-processing-property relationships, offering new capabilities for in silico OSC discovery and design. In this Review, we trace the evolution of these computational methods and their application to OSCs, beginning with early quantum-chemical methods to investigate resonance in benzene and building to recent machine-learning (ML) techniques and their application to ever more sophisticated OSC scientific and engineering challenges. Along the way, we highlight the limitations of the methods and how sophisticated physical and mathematical frameworks have been created to overcome those limitations. We illustrate applications of these methods to a range of specific challenges in OSCs derived from π-conjugated polymers and molecules, including predicting charge-carrier transport, modeling chain conformations and bulk morphology, estimating thermomechanical properties, and describing phonons and thermal transport, to name a few. Through these examples, we demonstrate how advances in computational methods accelerate the deployment of OSCsin wide-ranging technologies, such as organic photovoltaics (OPVs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic thermoelectrics, organic batteries, and organic (bio)sensors. We conclude by providing an outlook for the future development of computational techniques to discover and assess the properties of high-performing OSCs with greater accuracy.

Exploring Bethe-Salpeter Excited-State Dipoles: The Challenging Case of Increasingly Long Push-Pull Oligomers

The change of molecular dipole moment induced by photon absorption is key to interpret the measured optical spectra. Except for compact molecules, time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) remains the only theory allowing to quickly predict excited-state dipoles (μ^ES), albeit with a strong dependency on the selected exchange-correlation functional. This Letter presents the first assessment of the performances of the many-body Green's function Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism for the evaluation of the μ^ES. We explore increasingly long push-pull oligomers as they present an excited-state nature evolving with system size. This work shows that BSE's μ^ES do present the same evolution with oligomeric length as their CC2 and CCSD counterparts, with a dependency on the starting exchange-correlation functional that is strongly decreased as compared to TD-DFT. This Letter demonstrates that BSE is a valuable alternative to TD-DFT for properties related to the excited-state density and not only for transition energies and oscillator strengths.

Natural virtual orbitals for the GW method in the random-phase approximation and beyond

The increasingly popular GW method is becoming a convenient tool to determine vertical ionization energies in molecular systems. However, depending on the formalism used and the range of orbitals investigated, it may be hampered by a steep computational scaling. To alleviate this issue, correlated natural virtual orbitals (NVOs) based on second-order Møller-Plesset (MP2) and direct MP2 correlation energies are implemented, and the resulting correlated NVOs are tested on GW quasiparticle energies. Test cases include the popular GW variants G₀W₀ and evGW₀ as well as more elaborate vertex corrections. We find that for increasingly larger molecular systems and basis sets, NVOs considerably improve efficiency. Furthermore, we test the performance of the truncated (frozen) NVO ansatz on the GW100 test set. For the latter, it is demonstrated that, using a carefully chosen truncation threshold, NVOs lead to a negligible loss in accuracy while providing speedups of one order of magnitude. Furthermore, we compare the resulting quasiparticle energies to very accurate vertical ionization energies obtained from coupled-cluster theory with singles, doubles, and noniterative triples [CCSD(T)], confirming that the loss in accuracy introduced by truncating the NVOs is negligible compared to the methodical errors in the GW approximation. It is also demonstrated that the choice of basis set impacts results far more than using a suitably truncated NVO space. Therefore, at the same computational expense, more accurate results can be obtained using NVOs. Finally, we provide improved reference CCSD(T) values for the GW100 test set, which have been obtained using the def2-QZVPP basis set.

Assessing the Role of the Kohn-Sham Density in the Calculation of the Low-Lying Bethe-Salpeter Excitation Energies

We adopt the GW many-body perturbation theory in conjunction with the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) to compute 57 excitation energies of a set of 37 molecules. By using the PBEh global hybrid functional and a self-consistent scheme on the eigenvalues in GW, we show a strong dependence of the BSE energy on the starting Kohn-Sham (KS) density functional. This arises from both the quasiparticle energies and the spatial localization of the frozen KS orbitals employed to compute the BSE. In order to address the arbitrariness in the mean field choice, we adopt an orbital-tuning scheme where the amount of Fock exchange, α, is tuned to impose that the KS HOMO matches the GW quasiparticle eigenvalue, thus fulfilling the ionization potential theorem in DFT. The performance of the proposed scheme yields excellent results and it is similar to M06-2X and PBEh with α = 75%, consistent with tuned values of α ranging between 60% and 80%.

TDDFT versus GW/BSE Methods for Prediction of Light Absorption and Emission in a TADF Emitter

Design concepts for organic light emitting diode (OLED) emitters, which exhibit thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) and thereby achieve quantum yields exceeding 25%, depend on singlet-triplet splitting energies of order kT to allow reverse intersystem crossing at ambient temperatures. Simulation methods for these systems must be able to treat relatively large organic molecules, as well as predict their excited state energies, transition energies, singlet-triplet splittings, and absorption and emission cross sections with reasonable accuracy, in order to prove useful in the design process. Here we compare predictions of TDDFT with M06-2X and ωB97X-D exchange-correlation functionals and a G_oW_o@HF/BSE method for these quantities in the well-studied DPTZ-DBTO2 TADF emitter molecule. Geometry optimization is performed for ground state (GS) and lowest donor-acceptor charge transfer (CT) state for each functional. Optical absorption and emission cross sections and energies are calculated at these geometries. Relaxation energies are on the order of 0.5 eV, and the importance of obtaining excited state equilibrium geometries in predicting delayed fluorescence is demonstrated. There are clear trends in predictions of G_oW_o@HF/BSE, and TDDFT/ωB97X-D and M06-2X methods in which the former method favors local exciton (LE) states while the latter favors DA CT states and ωB97X-D makes intermediate predictions. G_oW_o@HF/BSE suffers from triplet instability for LE states but not CT states relevant for TADF. Shifts in HOMO and LUMO levels on adding a conductor-like polarizable continuum model dielectric background are used to estimate changes in excitation energies on going from the gas phase to a solvated molecule.

Connections between many-body perturbation and coupled-cluster theories

Here, we build on the works of Scuseria et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 129, 231101 (2008)] and Berkelbach [J. Chem. Phys. 149, 041103 (2018)] to show connections between the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism combined with the GW approximation from many-body perturbation theory and coupled-cluster (CC) theory at the ground- and excited-state levels. In particular, we show how to recast the GW and Bethe-Salpeter equations as non-linear CC-like equations. Similitudes between BSE@GW and the similarity-transformed equation-of-motion CC method are also put forward. The present work allows us to easily transfer key developments and the general knowledge gathered in CC theory to many-body perturbation theory. In particular, it may provide a path for the computation of ground- and excited-state properties (such as nuclear gradients) within the GW and BSE frameworks.

Combining Renormalized Singles GW Methods with the Bethe-Salpeter Equation for Accurate Neutral Excitation Energies

We apply the renormalized singles (RS) Green's function in the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE)/GW approach to predict accurate neutral excitation energies of molecular systems. The BSE calculations are performed on top of the G_RSW_RS method, which uses the RS Green's function also for the computation of the screened Coulomb interaction W. We show that the BSE/G_RSW_RS approach significantly outperforms BSE/G₀W₀ for predicting excitation energies of valence, Rydberg, and charge-transfer (CT) excitations by benchmarking the Truhlar-Gagliardi set, Stein CT set, and an atomic Rydberg test set. For the Truhlar-Gagliardi test set, BSE/G_RSW_RS provides comparable accuracy to time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) and is slightly better than BSE starting from eigenvalue self-consistent GW (evGW). For the Stein CT test set, BSE/G_RSW_RS significantly outperforms BSE/G₀W₀ and TDDFT with the accuracy comparable to BSE/evGW. We also show that BSE/G_RSW_RS predicts Rydberg excitation energies of atomic systems well. Besides the excellent accuracy, BSE/G_RSW_RS largely eliminates the dependence on the choice of the density functional approximation. This work demonstrates that the BSE/G_RSW_RS approach is accurate and efficient for predicting excitation energies for a broad range of systems, which expands the applicability of the BSE/GW approach.

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.

An optimally tuned range-separated hybrid starting point for ab initio GW plus Bethe–Salpeter equation calculations of molecules

The ab initio GW plus Bethe–Salpeter equation (GW-BSE, where G is the one particle Green's function and W is the screened Coulomb interaction) approach has emerged as a leading method for predicting excitations in both solids and molecules with a predictive power contingent upon several factors. Among these factors are the (1) generalized Kohn–Sham eigensystem used to construct the GW self-energy and to solve the BSE and (2) the efficacy and suitability of the Tamm–Dancoff approximation. Here, we present a detailed benchmark study of low-lying singlet excitations from a generalized Kohn–Sham (gKS) starting point based on an optimally tuned range-separated hybrid (OTRSH) functional. We show that the use of this gKS starting point with one-shot G0W0 and G0W0-BSE leads to the lowest mean absolute errors (MAEs) and mean signed errors (MSEs), with respect to high-accuracy reference values, demonstrated in the literature thus far for the ionization potentials of the GW100 benchmark set and for low-lying neutral excitations of Thiel’s set molecules in the gas phase, without the need for self-consistency. The MSEs and MAEs of one-shot G0W0-BSE@OTRSH excitation energies are comparable to or lower than those obtained with other functional starting points after self-consistency. Additionally, we compare these results with linear-response time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) calculations and find GW-BSE to be superior to TDDFT when calculations are based on the same exchange-correlation functional. This work demonstrates tuned range-separated hybrids used in combination with GW and GW-BSE can greatly suppress starting point dependence for molecules, leading to accuracy similar to that for higher-order wavefunction-based theories for molecules without the need for costlier iterations to self-consistency.

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.

Static and dynamic Bethe-Salpeter equations in the T-matrix approximation

While the well-established GW approximation corresponds to a resummation of the direct ring diagrams and is particularly well suited for weakly correlated systems, the T-matrix approximation does sum ladder diagrams up to infinity and is supposedly more appropriate in the presence of strong correlation. Here, we derive and implement, for the first time, the static and dynamic Bethe-Salpeter equations when one considers T-matrix quasiparticle energies and a T-matrix-based kernel. The performance of the static scheme and its perturbative dynamical correction are assessed by computing the neutral excited states of molecular systems. A comparison with more conventional schemes as well as other wave function methods is also reported. Our results suggest that the T-matrix-based formalism performs best in few-electron systems where the electron density remains low.

Combining localized orbital scaling correction and Bethe-Salpeter equation for accurate excitation energies

We applied localized orbital scaling correction (LOSC) in Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) to predict accurate excitation energies for molecules. LOSC systematically eliminates the delocalization error in the density functional approximation and is capable of approximating quasiparticle (QP) energies with accuracy similar to or better than GW Green's function approach and with much less computational cost. The QP energies from LOSC, instead of commonly used G0W0 and evGW, are directly used in BSE. We show that the BSE/LOSC approach greatly outperforms the commonly used BSE/G0W0 approach for predicting excitations with different characters. For the calculations of Truhlar-Gagliardi test set containing valence, charge transfer, and Rydberg excitations, BSE/LOSC with the Tamm-Dancoff approximation provides a comparable accuracy to time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) and BSE/evGW. For the calculations of Stein CT test set and Rydberg excitations of atoms, BSE/LOSC considerably outperforms both BSE/G0W0 and TDDFT approaches with a reduced starting point dependence. BSE/LOSC is, thus, a promising and efficient approach to calculate excitation energies for molecular systems.

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.

The GW/BSE Method in Magnetic Fields

The GW approximation and the Bethe–Salpeter equation have been implemented into the Turbomole program package for computations of molecular systems in a strong, finite magnetic field. Complex-valued London orbitals are used as basis functions to ensure gauge-invariant computational results. The implementation has been benchmarked against triplet excitation energies of 36 small to medium-sized molecules against reference values obtained at the approximate coupled-cluster level (CC2 approximation). Finally, a spectacular change of colour from orange to green of the tetracene molecule is induced by applying magnetic fields between 0 and 9,000 T perpendicular to the molecular plane.

Scrutinizing GW-Based Methods Using the Hubbard Dimer

Using the simple (symmetric) Hubbard dimer, we analyze some important features of the GW approximation. We show that the problem of the existence of multiple quasiparticle solutions in the (perturbative) one-shot GW method and its partially self-consistent version is solved by full self-consistency. We also analyze the neutral excitation spectrum using the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism within the standard GW approximation and find, in particular, that 1) some neutral excitation energies become complex when the electron-electron interaction U increases, which can be traced back to the approximate nature of the GW quasiparticle energies; 2) the BSE formalism yields accurate correlation energies over a wide range of U when the trace (or plasmon) formula is employed; 3) the trace formula is sensitive to the occurrence of complex excitation energies (especially singlet), while the expression obtained from the adiabatic-connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem (ACFDT) is more stable (yet less accurate); 4) the trace formula has the correct behavior for weak (i.e., small U) interaction, unlike the ACFDT expression.

Absorption Spectra of Solids from Periodic Equation-of-Motion Coupled-Cluster Theory

We present ab initio absorption spectra of six three-dimensional semiconductors and insulators calculated using Gaussian-based periodic equation-of-motion coupled-cluster theory with single and double excitations (EOM-CCSD). The spectra are calculated efficiently by solving a system of linear equations at each frequency, giving access to an energy range of tens of electronvolts without explicit enumeration of excited states. We assess the impact of cost-saving approximations associated with Brillouin zone sampling, frozen orbitals, and the partitioned EOM-CCSD approximation. Although our most converged spectra exhibit line shapes that are in good agreement with experimental spectra, they are uniformly shifted to higher energies by about 1 eV, which is not explained by the remaining finite-size errors. We tentatively attribute this discrepancy to a combination of vibrational effects and the remaining electron correlation, i.e., triple excitations and above.

GW100: A Slater-Type Orbital Perspective

We calculate complete basis set (CBS) limit-extrapolated ionization potentials (IPs) and electron affinities (EA) with Slater-type basis sets for the molecules in the GW100 database. To this end, we present two new Slater-type orbital (STO) basis sets of triple-(TZ) and quadruple-ζ (QZ) quality, whose polarization is adequate for correlated-electron methods and which contain extra diffuse functions to be able to correctly calculate EAs of molecules with a positive lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO). We demonstrate that going from TZ to QZ quality consistently reduces the basis set error of our computed IPs and EAs, and we conclude that a good estimate of these quantities at the CBS limit can be obtained by extrapolation. With mean absolute deviations (MAD) from 70 to 85 meV, our CBS limit-extrapolated IP are in good agreement with results from FHI-AIMS, TURBOMOLE, VASP, and WEST, while they differ by more than 130 meV on average from nanoGW. With a MAD of 160 meV, our EA are also in good agreement with the WEST code. Especially for systems with positive LUMOs, the agreement is excellent. With respect to other codes, the STO-type basis sets generally underestimate EAs of small molecules with strongly bound LUMOs. With 62 meV for IPs and 93 meV for EAs, we find much better agreement with CBS limit-extrapolated results from FHI-AIMS for a set of 250 medium to large organic molecules.

Systematic improvement of molecular excited state calculations by inclusion of nuclear quantum motion: A mode-resolved picture and the effect of molecular size

The energies of molecular excited states arise as solutions to the electronic Schrödinger equation and are often compared to experiment. At the same time, nuclear quantum motion is known to be important and to induce a redshift of excited state energies. However, it is thus far unclear whether incorporating nuclear quantum motion in molecular excited state calculations leads to a systematic improvement of their predictive accuracy, making further investigation necessary. Here, we present such an investigation by employing two first-principles methods for capturing the effect of quantum fluctuations on excited state energies, which we apply to the Thiel set of organic molecules. We show that accounting for zero-point motion leads to much improved agreement with experiment, compared to "static" calculations that only account for electronic effects, and the magnitude of the redshift can become as large as 1.36 eV. Moreover, we show that the effect of nuclear quantum motion on excited state energies largely depends on the molecular size, with smaller molecules exhibiting larger redshifts. Our methodology also makes it possible to analyze the contribution of individual vibrational normal modes to the redshift of excited state energies, and in several molecules, we identify a limited number of modes dominating this effect. Overall, our study provides a foundation for systematically quantifying the shift of excited state energies due to nuclear quantum motion and for understanding this effect at a microscopic level.

Spin-Conserved and Spin-Flip Optical Excitations from the Bethe-Salpeter Equation Formalism

Like adiabatic time-dependent density-functional theory (TD-DFT), the Bethe–Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism of many-body perturbation theory, in its static approximation, is “blind” to double (and higher) excitations, which are ubiquitous, for example, in conjugated molecules like polyenes. Here, we apply the spin-flip ansatz (which considers the lowest triplet state as the reference configuration instead of the singlet ground state) to the BSE formalism in order to access, in particular, double excitations. The present scheme is based on a spin-unrestricted version of the GW approximation employed to compute the charged excitations and screened Coulomb potential required for the BSE calculations. Dynamical corrections to the static BSE optical excitations are taken into account via an unrestricted generalization of our recently developed (renormalized) perturbative treatment. The performance of the present spin-flip BSE formalism is illustrated by computing excited-state energies of the beryllium atom, the hydrogen molecule at various bond lengths, and cyclobutadiene in its rectangular and square-planar geometries.

Assessment of the Ab Initio Bethe-Salpeter Equation Approach for the Low-Lying Excitation Energies of Bacteriochlorophylls and Chlorophylls

Bacteriochlorophyll and chlorophyll molecules are crucial building blocks of the photosynthetic apparatus in bacteria, algae, and plants. Embedded in transmembrane protein complexes, they are responsible for the primary processes of photosynthesis: excitation energy and charge transfer. Here, we use ab initio many-body perturbation theory within the GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) approach to calculate the electronic structure and optical excitations of bacteriochlorophylls a, b, c, d, and e and chlorophylls a and b. We systematically study the effects of the structure, basis set size, partial self-consistency in GW, and the underlying exchange-correlation approximation and compare our calculations with results from time-dependent density functional theory, multireference RASPT2, and experimental literature results. We find that optical excitations calculated with GW+BSE are in excellent agreement with experimental data, with an average deviation of less than 100 meV for the first three bright excitations of the entire family of (bacterio)chlorophylls. Contrary to state-of-the-art time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) with an optimally tuned range-separated hybrid functional, this accuracy is achieved in a parameter-free approach. Moreover, GW+BSE predicts the energy differences between the low-energy excitations correctly and eliminates spurious charge transfer states that TDDFT with (semi)local approximations is known to produce. Our study provides accurate reference results and highlights the potential of the GW+BSE approach for the simulation of larger pigment complexes.

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.

Full-frequency GW without frequency

Efficient computer implementations of the GW approximation must approximate a numerically challenging frequency integral; the integral can be performed analytically, but doing so leads to an expensive implementation whose computational cost scales as O(N6), where N is the size of the system. Here, we introduce a new formulation of the full-frequency GW approximation by exactly recasting it as an eigenvalue problem in an expanded space. This new formulation (1) avoids the use of time or frequency grids, (2) naturally obviates the need for the common "diagonal" approximation, (3) enables common iterative eigensolvers that reduce the canonical scaling to O(N5), and (4) enables a density-fitted implementation that reduces the scaling to O(N4). We numerically verify these scaling behaviors and test a variety of approximations that are motivated by this new formulation. The new formulation is found to be competitive with conventional O(N4) methods based on analytic continuation or contour deformation. In this new formulation, the relation of the GW approximation to configuration interaction, coupled-cluster theory, and the algebraic diagrammatic construction is made especially apparent, providing a new direction for improvements to the GW approximation.

Innate immune activation by conditioned medium of cancer cells following combined phototherapy with photosensitizer-loaded gold nanorods

Nanoparticle-based phototherapy has evolved to include immunotherapy as an effective treatment combination for cancers through inducing anti-cancer immune activation leading to downstream adaptive responses and immune protection. However, most cancer phototherapy studies that claimed anti-cancer immunogenic effects often included exogenous immunostimulants to potentiate immune responses and did not clearly establish their effects on immune cells. In this study, we showed that combined photodynamic (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) using gold nanorods (NRs) loaded with the photosensitizer chlorin e6 (Ce6) on endogenously formed mouse serum (MS) protein coronas (i.e., NR-MS-Ce6) on EMT6 murine mammary carcinoma cells could potentiate the activation of both J774A.1 macrophages and DC2.4 dendritic cells. The activation of these innate immune cells by the conditioned media from cancer cells treated with combined PDT + PTT was cell-type and number dependent. While treated B16-OVA murine melanoma cells induced lower activation levels for both immune cell types compared to EMT6, they caused higher pro-inflammatory cytokine secretion levels. Our study suggests the importance of immunological investigations to complement any nanoparticle-based therapeutic interventions to better evaluate their efficacy. This could be achieved through a simple approach to screen for the first line of immune responses arising from these therapies prior to in vivo studies.

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.

Dynamical correction to the Bethe-Salpeter equation beyond the plasmon-pole approximation

The Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism is a computationally affordable method for the calculation of accurate optical excitation energies in molecular systems. Similar to the ubiquitous adiabatic approximation of time-dependent density-functional theory, the static approximation, which substitutes a dynamical (i.e., frequency-dependent) kernel by its static limit, is usually enforced in most implementations of the BSE formalism. Here, going beyond the static approximation, we compute the dynamical correction of the electron-hole screening for molecular excitation energies, thanks to a renormalized first-order perturbative correction to the static BSE excitation energies. The present dynamical correction goes beyond the plasmon-pole approximation as the dynamical screening of the Coulomb interaction is computed exactly within the random-phase approximation. Our calculations are benchmarked against high-level (coupled-cluster) calculations, allowing one to assess the clear improvement brought by the dynamical correction for both singlet and triplet optical transitions.

Tight binding models accurately predict band structures for copolymer semiconductors

Conjugated polymers possess a wide range of desirable properties including accessible band gaps, plasticity, tunability, mechanical flexibility and synthetic versatility, making them attractive for use as active materials in organic photovoltaics (OPVs). In particular, push-pull copolymers, consisting of alternating electron-rich and electron-deficient moieties, offer broad optical absorption, tunable band gaps, and increased charge transfer between monomer units. However, the large number of possible monomer combinations to explore means screening OPV copolymers by first-principles quantum calculations is computationally intensive. If copolymer band structures could be rapidly computed from homopolymer data, potential materials could be screened more efficiently. In this work, we construct tight binding models of copolymer band structures with parameters determined by density functional theory (DFT) calculations on homopolymers. We use these models to predict copolymer valence and conduction bands, which compare well to direct DFT calculations of copolymer band structures.

The Bethe-Salpeter Equation Formalism: From Physics to Chemistry

The Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism is steadily asserting itself as a new efficient and accurate tool in the ensemble of computational methods available to chemists in order to predict optical excitations in molecular systems. In particular, the combination of the so-called GW approximation, giving access to reliable ionization energies and electron affinities, and the BSE formalism, able to model UV/vis spectra, has shown to provide accurate singlet excitation energies with a typical error of 0.1-0.3 eV. With a similar computational cost as time-dependent density-functional theory (TD-DFT), BSE is able to provide an accuracy on par with the most accurate global and range-separated hybrid functionals without the unsettling choice of the exchange-correlation functional, resolving further known issues (e.g., charge-transfer excitations). In this Perspective, we provide a historical overview of BSE, with a particular focus on its condensed-matter roots. We also propose a critical review of its strengths and weaknesses in different chemical situations.

Understanding real-time time-dependent density-functional theory simulations of ultrafast laser-induced dynamics in organic molecules

Real-time time-dependent density functional theory, in conjunction with the Ehrenfest molecular dynamics scheme, is becoming a popular methodology to investigate ultrafast phenomena on the nanoscale. Thanks to recent developments, it is also possible to explicitly include in the simulations a time-dependent laser pulse, thereby accessing the transient excitation regime. However, the complexity entailed in these calculations calls for in-depth analysis of the accessible and yet approximate (either "dressed" or "bare") quantities in order to evaluate their ability to provide us with a realistic picture of the simulated processes. In this work, we analyze the ultrafast dynamics of three small molecules (ethylene, benzene, and thiophene) excited by a resonant laser pulse in the framework of the adiabatic local-density approximation. The electronic response to the laser perturbation in terms of induced dipole moment and excited-state population is compared to the results given by an exactly solvable two-level model. In this way, we can interpret the charge-carrier dynamics in terms of simple estimators, such as the number of excited electrons. From the computed transient absorption spectra, we unravel the appearance of nonlinear effects such as excited-state absorption and vibronic coupling. In this way, we observe that the laser excitation affects the vibrational spectrum by enhancing the anharmonicities therein, while the coherent vibrational motion contributes to stabilizing the electronic excitation already within a few tens of femtoseconds.

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.

Pros and Cons of the Bethe-Salpeter Formalism for Ground-State Energies

The combination of the many-body Green's function GW approximation and the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism has shown to be a promising alternative to time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) for computing vertical transition energies and oscillator strengths in molecular systems. The BSE formalism can also be employed to compute ground-state correlation energies thanks to the adiabatic-connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem (ACFDT). Here, we study the topology of the ground-state potential energy surfaces (PESs) of several diatomic molecules near their equilibrium bond length. Using comparisons with state-of-art computational approaches (CC3), we show that ACFDT@BSE is surprisingly accurate and can even compete with lower-order coupled cluster methods (CC2 and CCSD) in terms of total energies and equilibrium bond distances for the considered systems. However, we sometimes observe unphysical irregularities on the ground-state PES in relation with difficulties in the identification of a few GW quasiparticle energies.

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.

Ab initio modelling of local interfaces in doped organic semiconductors

Doping in organic semiconductors remains a debated issue from both an experimental and ab initio perspective. Due to the complexity of these systems, which exhibit a low degree of crystallinity and high level of disorder, modelling doped organic semiconductors from first-principles calculations is not a trivial task, as their electronic and optical properties are sensitive to the choice of initial geometries. A crucial aspect to take into account, in view of rationalizing the electronic structure of these materials through ab initio calculations, is the role of local donor/acceptor interfaces. We address this problem in the framework of state-of-the-art density-functional theory and many-body perturbation theory, investigating the structural, electronic, and optical properties of quaterthiophene and sexithiophene oligomers doped by 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-7,7,8,8-tetracyano-quinodimethane (F4TCNQ). We consider different model structures ranging from isolated dimers and trimers, to periodic stacks. Our results demonstrate that the choice of the initial geometry critically impacts the resulting electronic structure and the degree of charge transfer in the materials, depending on the amount and on the nature of the local interfaces between donor and acceptor species. The optical spectra appear less sensitive to these parameters at least from a first glance, although a quantitative analysis of the excitations reveals that their Frenkel or charge-transfer character is affected by the characteristics of the donor/acceptor interfaces as well as by the donor length. Our findings represent an important step forward towards an insightful first-principles description of the microscopic properties of doped organic semiconductors complementary to experiments.