Toward Laplace MP2 method using range separated Coulomb potential and orbital selective virtuals

Local Second-Order Møller-Plesset Theory with a Single Threshold Using Orthogonal Virtual Orbitals: Theory, Implementation, and Assessment

It has long been clear that electron correlation methods exhibit unphysical compute scalings with molecular size, which has motivated the development of local correlation methods to discard effectively zero contributions in a controlled way to yield an approximate correlation energy. The ideal local correlation method should have a single numerical threshold that controls the dropping of terms with the ability to have that threshold set small enough so that the correlation energy is reproduced to enough significant figures such that the result is chemically identical. This work reports such a method for the second-order Møller-Plesset (MP2) theory. The theory, implementation, and testing of this local MP2 theory are reported. Thresholds ranging from 10-5 to 10-8 and basis sets ranging from split valence plus polarization through to quadruple-ζ are assessed for local MP2 calculations on a range of molecules, including linear chains and molecules with two- and three-dimensional character. The implementation is shared memory parallel via OpenMP and yields roughly 50% parallel efficiency with 16 cores for a large job. Considerable efforts were made to minimize memory demands, which increased as thresholds were tightened. A variety of relative energy calculations are presented as a function of threshold to provide some guidance to users on how to obtain adequate precision at a low compute cost. It is particularly clear that derivative properties require tighter thresholds in order to achieve an adequate precision.

Further investigations into a Laplace MP2 method using range separated Coulomb potential and orbital selective virtuals: Multipole correction, OSV extrapolation, and critical assessment

We report further investigations to aid the development of a Laplace MP2 (second-order Møller Plesset) method with a range separated Coulomb potential partitioned into short- and long-range parts. The implementation of the method extensively uses sparse matrix algebra, density fitting techniques for the short-range part, and a Fourier transformation in spherical coordinates for the long-range part of the potential. Localized molecular orbitals are employed for the occupied space, whereas virtual space is described by orbital specific virtual orbitals (OSVs) associated with localized molecular orbitals. The Fourier transform is deficient for very large distances between localized occupied orbitals, and a multipole expansion for widely separated pairs is introduced for the direct MP2 contribution, which is applicable also to non-Coulombic potentials that do not satisfy the Laplace equation. For the exchange contribution, an efficient screening of contributing localized occupied pairs is employed, which is discussed more completely here. To mitigate errors due to the truncation of OSVs, a simple and efficient extrapolation procedure is used to obtain results close to MP2 for the full basis set of atomic orbitals Using a suitable set of default parameters, the accuracy of the approach is demonstrated. The current implementation of the approach is not very efficient, and the aim of this paper is to introduce and critically discuss ideas that can have more general applicability beyond MP2 calculations for large molecules.

Cluster-in-Molecule Method Combined with the Domain-Based Local Pair Natural Orbital Approach for Electron Correlation Calculations of Periodic Systems

The cluster-in-molecule (CIM) method was extended to systems with periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) in a previous work (PBC-CIM) [J. Chem. Theory Comput.2019, 15, 2933], which is able to compute the electronic structures of periodic systems at second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) and coupled cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) levels. However, the high computational costs of CCSD with respect to the size of clusters limit the usage of PBC-CIM to crystals with small or medium unit cells. In this work, we further develop the PBC-CIM method by employing the domain-based local pair natural orbital (DLPNO) methods for the electron correlation calculations of clusters to reduce the computational costs. The combined approach allows CCSD with perturbative triples, denoted as CCSD(T), to be computationally available for accurate descriptions of periodic systems. The distant-pair correction is also implemented to improve the accuracy of PBC-CIM. As in the molecular cases, the distant pair correction significantly improves the accuracy of various PBC-CIM methods with few additional costs. The PBC-CIM-DLPNO-CCSD(T) approach has been applied to investigate the optimized lattice parameter of the cubic LiCl crystal and two adsorption problems (CO on the NaCl(100) surface and H₂O on the h-BN surface). The results show that the CIM-DLPNO-CCSD(T) method offers accurate and efficient descriptions for the studied systems. Another application to the cohesive energy of the acetic acid crystal reveals that large basis sets are necessary for reliable calculations on the cohesive energies of molecular crystals.