Emmanuel Giner

Spin Density Distribution in Open-Shell Transition Metal Systems: A Comparative Post-Hartree-Fock, Density Functional Theory, and Quantum Monte Carlo Study of the CuCl2 Molecule.

We present a comparative study of the spatial distribution of the spin density of the ground state of CuCl2 using Density Functional Theory (DFT), quantum Monte Carlo (QMC), and post-Hartree-Fock wave function theory (WFT). A number of studies have shown that an accurate description of the electronic structure of the lowest-lying states of this molecule is particularly challenging due to the interplay between the strong dynamical correlation effects in the 3d shell and the delocalization of the 3d hole over the chlorine atoms. More generally, this problem is representative of the difficulties encountered when studying open-shell metal-containing molecular systems. Here, it is shown that qualitatively different results for the spin density distribution are obtained from the various quantum-mechanical approaches. At the DFT level, the spin density distribution is found to be very dependent on the functional employed. At the QMC level, Fixed-Node Diffusion Monte Carlo (FN-DMC) results are strongly dependent on the nodal structure of the trial wave function. Regarding wave function methods, most approaches not including a very high amount of dynamic correlation effects lead to a much too high localization of the spin density on the copper atom, in sharp contrast with DFT. To shed some light on these conflicting results Full CI-type (FCI) calculations using the 6-31G basis set and based on a selection process of the most important determinants, the so-called CIPSI approach (Configuration Interaction with Perturbative Selection done Iteratively) are performed. Quite remarkably, it is found that for this 63-electron molecule and a full CI space including about 10(18) determinants, the FCI limit can almost be reached. Putting all results together, a natural and coherent picture for the spin distribution is proposed.

Fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo potential energy curve of the fluorine molecule F2 using selected configuration interaction trial wavefunctions

The potential energy curve of the F2 molecule is calculated with Fixed-Node Diffusion Monte Carlo (FN-DMC) using Configuration Interaction (CI)-type trial wavefunctions. To keep the number of determinants reasonable and thus make FN-DMC calculations feasible in practice, the CI expansion is restricted to those determinants that contribute the most to the total energy. The selection of the determinants is made using the CIPSI approach (Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection made Iteratively). The trial wavefunction used in FN-DMC is directly issued from the deterministic CI program; no Jastrow factor is used and no preliminary multi-parameter stochastic optimization of the trial wavefunction is performed. The nodes of CIPSI wavefunctions are found to reduce significantly the fixed-node error and to be systematically improved upon increasing the number of selected determinants. To reduce the non-parallelism error of the potential energy curve, a scheme based on the use of a R-dependent number of determinants is introduced. Using Dunnings cc-pVDZ basis set, the FN-DMC energy curve of F2 is found to be of a quality similar to that obtained with full configuration interaction/cc-pVQZ.

Accurate nonrelativistic ground-state energies of 3d transition metal atoms

We present accurate nonrelativistic ground-state energies of the transition metal atoms of the 3d series calculated with Fixed-Node Diffusion Monte Carlo (FN-DMC). Selected multi-determinantal expansions obtained with the CIPSI (Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection made Iteratively) method and including the most prominent determinants of the full configuration interaction expansion are used as trial wavefunctions. Using a maximum of a few tens of thousands determinants, fixed-node errors on total DMC energies are found to be greatly reduced for some atoms with respect to those obtained with Hartree-Fock nodes. To the best of our knowledge, the FN-DMC/(CIPSI nodes) ground-state energies presented here are the lowest variational total energies reported so far. They differ from the recently recommended non-variational values of McCarthy and Thakkar [J. Chem. Phys. 136, 054107 (2012)] only by a few percents of the correlation energy. Thanks to the variational property of FN-DMC total energies, our results provide exact lower bounds for the absolute value of all-electron correlation energies, |Ec|.

Communication: Toward an improved control of the fixed-node error in quantum Monte Carlo: The case of the water molecule

All-electron Fixed-node DiffusionMonte Carlo calculations for the nonrelativistic ground-state energy of the water molecule at equilibrium geometry are presented. The determinantal part of the trial wavefunction is obtained from a selected Configuration Interaction calculation[Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection done Iteratively (CIPSI) method] including up to about 1.4 × 10(6) of determinants. Calculations are made using the cc-pCVnZ family of basis sets, with n = 2 to 5. In contrast with most quantum Monte Carlo works no re-optimization of the determinantal part in presence of a Jastrow is performed. For the largest cc-pCV5Z basis set the lowest upper bound for the ground-state energy reported so far of -76.437 44(18) is obtained. The fixed-node energy is found to decrease regularly as a function of the cardinal numbern and the Complete Basis Set limit associated with exact nodes is easily extracted. The resulting energy of -76.438 94(12) - in perfect agreement with the best experimentally derived value - is the most accurate theoretical estimate reported so far. We emphasize that employing selected configuration interactionnodes of increasing quality in a given family of basis sets may represent a simple, deterministic, reproducible, and systematic way of controlling the fixed-node error in diffusionMonte Carlo.

Quantum Monte Carlo with very large multideterminant wavefunctions.

An algorithm to compute efficiently the first two derivatives of (very) large multideterminant wavefunctions for quantum Monte Carlo calculations is presented. The calculation of determinants and their derivatives is performed using the Sherman–Morrison formula for updating the inverse Slater matrix. An improved implementation based on the reduction of the number of column substitutions and on a very efficient implementation of the calculation of the scalar products involved is presented. It is emphasized that multideterminant expansions contain in general a large number of identical spin‐specific determinants: for typical configuration interaction‐type wavefunctions the number of unique spin‐specific determinants Ndetσ ( σ=↑,↓ ) with a non‐negligible weight in the expansion is of order O(Ndet) . We show that a careful implementation of the calculation of the Ndet ‐dependent contributions can make this step negligible enough so that in practice the algorithm scales as the total number of unique spin‐specific determinants,  Ndet↑+Ndet↓ , over a wide range of total number of determinants (here, Ndet up to about one million), thus greatly reducing the total computational cost. Finally, a new truncation scheme for the multideterminant expansion is proposed so that larger expansions can be considered without increasing the computational time. The algorithm is illustrated with all‐electron fixed‐node diffusion Monte Carlo calculations of the total energy of the chlorine atom. Calculations using a trial wavefunction including about 750,000 determinants with a computational increase of ∼400 compared to a single‐determinant calculation are shown to be feasible.

A simple approach to the state-specific MR-CC using the intermediate Hamiltonian formalism

This paper presents a rigorous state-specific multi-reference coupled cluster formulation of the method first proposed by Meller et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 104, 4068 (1996)]. Guess values of the amplitudes of the single and double excitations (the T operator) on the top of the references are extracted from the knowledge of the coefficients of the Multi-Reference Singles and Doubles Configuration Interaction (MR-CISD) matrix. The multiple parentage problem is solved by scaling these amplitudes from the interaction between the references and the singles and doubles. Then one proceeds to a dressing of the MR-CISD matrix under the effect of the triples and quadruples, the coefficients of which are estimated from the action of exp(T). This dressing follows the logic of the intermediate effective Hamiltonian formalism. The dressed MR-CISD matrix is diagonalized and the process is iterated to convergence. As a simplification, the coefficients of the triples and quadruples may in practice be calculated from the action of T(2) only, introducing 5th-order differences in the energies. The so-simplified method is tested on a series of benchmark systems from Complete Active Spaces (CASs) involving 2-6 active electrons up to bond breakings. The comparison with full configuration interaction results shows that the errors are of the order of a few millihartree, five times smaller than those of the CAS-CISD, and the deviation to strict separability is lower than 10 μ hartree. The method is totally uncontracted, parallelizable, and extremely flexible since it may be applied to selected MR and/or selected CISD. Some potential generalizations are briefly discussed.The multi-reference Coupled Cluster method first proposed by Meller et al (J. Chem. Phys. 1996) has been implemented and tested. Guess values of the amplitudes of the single and double excitations (the T̂ operator) on the top of the references are extracted from the knowledge of the coefficients of the Multi Reference Singles and Doubles Configuration Interaction (MRSDCI) matrix. The multiple parentage problem is solved by scaling these amplitudes on the interaction between the references and the Singles and Doubles. Then one proceeds to a dressing of the MRSDCI matrix under the effect of the Triples and Quadruples, the coefficients of which are estimated from the action of T̂ . This dressing follows the logics of the intermediate effective Hamiltonian formalism. The dressed MRSDCI matrix is diagonalized and the process is iterated to convergence. The method is tested on a series of benchmark systems from Complete Active Spaces (CAS) involving 2 or 4 active electrons up to bond breakings. The comparison with Full Configuration Interaction (FCI) results shows that the errors are of the order of a few milli-hartree, five times smaller than those of the CASSDCI. The method is totally uncontracted, parallelizable, and extremely flexible since it may be applied to selected MR and/or selected SDCI. Some potential generalizations are briefly discussed.

A Jeziorski-Monkhorst fully uncontracted multi-reference perturbative treatment. I. Principles, second-order versions, and tests on ground state potential energy curves

The present paper introduces a new multi-reference perturbation approach developed at second order, based on a Jeziorski-Mokhorst expansion using individual Slater determinants as perturbers. Thanks to this choice of perturbers, an effective Hamiltonian may be built, allowing for the dressing of the Hamiltonian matrix within the reference space, assumed here to be a CAS-CI. Such a formulation accounts then for the coupling between the static and dynamic correlation effects. With our new definition of zeroth-order energies, these two approaches are strictly size-extensive provided that local orbitals are used, as numerically illustrated here and formally demonstrated in the Appendix. Also, the present formalism allows for the factorization of all double excitation operators, just as in internally contracted approaches, strongly reducing the computational cost of these two approaches with respect to other determinant-based perturbation theories. The accuracy of these methods has been investigated on ground-state potential curves up to full dissociation limits for a set of six molecules involving single, double, and triple bond breaking together with an excited state calculation. The spectroscopic constants obtained with the present methods are found to be in very good agreement with the full configuration interaction results. As the present formalism does not use any parameter or numerically unstable operation, the curves obtained with the two methods are smooth all along the dissociation path.

Using CIPSI nodes in diffusion Monte Carlo

Several aspects of the recently proposed DMC-CIPSI approach consisting in using selected Configuration Interaction (SCI) approaches such as CIPSI (Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection done Iteratively) to build accurate nodes for diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) calculations are presented and discussed. The main ideas are illustrated with a number of calculations for diatomics molecules and for the benchmark G1 set.

Alternative definition of excitation amplitudes in multi-reference state-specific coupled cluster

A central difficulty of state-specific Multi-Reference Coupled Cluster (MR-CC) in the multi-exponential Jeziorski-Monkhorst formalism concerns the definition of the amplitudes of the single and double excitation operators appearing in the exponential wave operators. If the reference space is a complete active space (CAS), the number of these amplitudes is larger than the number of singly and doubly excited determinants on which one may project the eigenequation, and one must impose additional conditions. The present work first defines a state-specific reference-independent operator T∼^m which acting on the CAS component of the wave function |Ψ0m⟩ maximizes the overlap between (1+T∼^m)|Ψ0m⟩ and the eigenvector of the CAS-SD (Singles and Doubles) Configuration Interaction (CI) matrix |ΨCAS-SDm⟩. This operator may be used to generate approximate coefficients of the triples and quadruples, and a dressing of the CAS-SD CI matrix, according to the intermediate Hamiltonian formalism. The process may be iterated to convergence. As a refinement towards a strict coupled cluster formalism, one may exploit reference-independent amplitudes provided by (1+T∼^m)|Ψ0m⟩ to define a reference-dependent operator T^m by fitting the eigenvector of the (dressed) CAS-SD CI matrix. The two variants, which are internally uncontracted, give rather similar results. The new MR-CC version has been tested on the ground state potential energy curves of 6 molecules (up to triple-bond breaking) and two excited states. The non-parallelism error with respect to the full-CI curves is of the order of 1 mEh.

Interplay between electronic correlation and metal-ligand delocalization in the spectroscopy of transition metal compounds: case study on a series of planar Cu2+complexes.

We present a comprehensive theoretical study of the physical phenomena that determine the relative energies of three of the lowest electronic states of each of the square-planar copper complexes [CuCl4]2-, [Cu(NH3)4]2+, and [Cu(H2O)4]2+ and present a detailed analysis of the extent to which truncated configuration interaction (CI) and coupled cluster (CC) theories succeed in predicing the excitation energies. We find that ligand-metal charge transfer (CT) single excitations play a crucial role in the correct determination of the properties of these systems, even though the first impact of these CT on the energetics of these systems appears at fourth-order in perturbation theory. We provide a minimal selected CI space for describing these systems with multireference theories and use a high-order perturbation theory analysis within this space to derive a simple and general physical picture for the LMCT process. We find that coupled cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) energy differences agree very well with near full CI values even though the D1 diagnostics are large, which casts doubt on the usefulness of single-amplitude-based multireference diagnostics. Configuration interaction singles and doubles (CISD) severely underestimates the excitation energies, and the failure is a direct consequence of the size-inconsisency errors in CISD. Finally, we present reference values for the energy differences computed using explicitly correlated CCSD(T) and BCCD(T) theory.