Roland Lindh

Molcas: a program package for computational chemistry.

The program system MOLCAS is a package for calculations of electronic and structural properties of molecular systems in gas, liquid, or solid phase. It contains a number of modern quantum chemical methods for studies of the electronic structure in ground and excited electronic states. A macromolecular environment can be modeled by a combination of quantum chemistry and molecular mechanics. It is further possible to describe a crystalline material using model potentials. Solvent effects can be treated using continuum models or by combining quantum chemical calculations with molecular dynamics or Monte-Carlo simulations. MOLCAS is especially adapted to treat systems with a complex electronic structure, where the simplest quantum chemical models do not work. These features together with the inclusion of relativistic effects makes it possible to treat with good accuracy systems including atoms from the entire periodic system. MOLCAS has effective methods for geometry optimization of equilibria, transition states, conical intersections, etc. This facilitates studies of excited state energy surfaces, spectroscopy, and photochemical processes.

Software news and update MOLCAS 7 : The Next Generation

Some of the new unique features of the MOLCAS quantum chemistry package version 7 are presented in this report. In particular, the Cholesky decomposition method applied to some quantum chemical methods is described. This approach is used both in the context of a straight forward approximation of the two‐electron integrals and in the generation of so‐called auxiliary basis sets. The article describes how the method is implemented for most known wave functions models: self‐consistent field, density functional theory, 2nd order perturbation theory, complete‐active space self‐consistent field multiconfigurational reference 2nd order perturbation theory, and coupled‐cluster methods. The report further elaborates on the implementation of a restricted‐active space self‐consistent field reference function in conjunction with 2nd order perturbation theory. The average atomic natural orbital basis for relativistic calculations, covering the whole periodic table, are described and associated unique properties are demonstrated. Furthermore, the use of the arbitrary order Douglas‐Kroll‐Hess transformation for one‐component relativistic calculations and its implementation are discussed. This section especially focuses on the implementation of the so‐called picture‐change‐free atomic orbital property integrals. Moreover, the ElectroStatic Potential Fitted scheme, a version of a quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics hybrid method implemented in MOLCAS, is described and discussed. Finally, the report discusses the use of the MOLCAS package for advanced studies of photo chemical phenomena and the usefulness of the algorithms for constrained geometry optimization in MOLCAS in association with such studies.

MOLCAS 8: New Capabilities for Multiconfigurational Quantum Chemical Calculations across the Periodic Table

In this report, we summarize and describe the recent unique updates and additions to the Molcas quantum chemistry program suite as contained in release version 8. These updates include natural and spin orbitals for studies of magnetic properties, local and linear scaling methods for the Douglas–Kroll–Hess transformation, the generalized active space concept in MCSCF methods, a combination of multiconfigurational wave functions with density functional theory in the MC‐PDFT method, additional methods for computation of magnetic properties, methods for diabatization, analytical gradients of state average complete active space SCF in association with density fitting, methods for constrained fragment optimization, large‐scale parallel multireference configuration interaction including analytic gradients via the interface to the Columbus package, and approximations of the CASPT2 method to be used for computations of large systems. In addition, the report includes the description of a computational machinery for nonlinear optical spectroscopy through an interface to the QM/MM package Cobramm. Further, a module to run molecular dynamics simulations is added, two surface hopping algorithms are included to enable nonadiabatic calculations, and the DQ method for diabatization is added. Finally, we report on the subject of improvements with respects to alternative file options and parallelization.

Towards an accurate molecular orbital theory for excited states: Ethene, butadiene, and hexatriene

A newly proposed quantum chemical approach for ab initio calculations of electronic spectra of molecular systems is applied to the molecules ethene, trans-1,3-butadiene, and trans-trans-1,3,5-hexat ...

The reduced multiplication scheme of the Rys quadrature and new recurrence relations for auxiliary function based two‐electron integral evaluation

The reduced multiplication scheme of the Rys quadrature is presented. The method is based on new ways in which the Rys quadrature can be developed if it is implemented together with the transfer equation applied to the contracted integrals. In parallel to the new scheme of the Rys quadrature improvements are suggested to the auxiliary function based algorithms. The two new methods have very favorable theoretical floating point operation (FLOP) counts as compared to other methods. It is noted that the only significant difference in performance of the two new methods is due to the vectorizability of the presented algorithms. In order to exhibit this, both methods were implemented in the integral program seward. Timings are presented for comparisons with other implemenations. Finally, it is demonstrated how the transfer equation in connection with the use of spherical harmonic Gaussians offers a very attractive path to compute the two‐electron integrals of such basis functions. It is demonstrated both theore...

Local properties of quantum chemical systems: The LoProp approach

A new method is presented, which makes it possible to partition molecular properties like multipole moments and polarizabilities, into atomic and interatomic contributions. The method requires a subdivision of the atomic basis set into occupied and virtual basis functions for each atom in the molecular system. The localization procedure is organized into a series of orthogonalizations of the original basis set, which will have as a final result a localized orthonormal basis set. The new localization procedure is demonstrated to be stable with various basis sets, and to provide physically meaningful localized properties. Transferability of the methyl properties for the alkane series and of the carbon and hydrogen properties for the benzene, naphtalene, and anthracene series is demonstrated.

New Relativistic Atomic Natural Orbital Basis Sets for Lanthanide Atoms with Applications to the Ce Diatom and LuF3

New basis sets of the atomic natural orbital (ANO) type have been developed for the lanthanide atoms La-Lu. The ANOs have been obtained from the average density matrix of the ground and lowest excited states of the atom, the positive ions, and the atom in an electric field. Scalar relativistic effects are included through the use of a Douglas-Kroll-Hess Hamiltonian. Multiconfigurational wave functions have been used with dynamic correlation included using second-order perturbation theory (CASSCF/CASPT2). The basis sets are applied in calculations of ionization energies and some excitation energies. Computed ionization energies have an accuracy better than 0.1 eV in most cases. Two molecular applications are included as illustration: the cerium diatom and the LuF3 molecule. In both cases it is shown that 4f orbitals are not involved in the chemical bond in contrast to an earlier claim for the latter molecule.

Analytical energy gradients for local second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory using density fitting approximations

An efficient method to compute analytical energy derivatives for local second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation energy is presented. Density fitting approximations are employed for all 4-index integrals and their derivatives. Using local fitting approximations, quadratic scaling with molecular size and cubic scaling with basis set size for a given molecule is achieved. The density fitting approximations have a negligible effect on the accuracy of optimized equilibrium structures or computed energy differences. The method can be applied to much larger molecules and basis sets than any previous second-order Møller-Plesset gradient program. The efficiency and accuracy of the method is demonstrated for a number of organic molecules as well as for molecular clusters. Examples of geometry optimizations for molecules with 100 atoms and over 2000 basis functions without symmetry are presented.

Unbiased auxiliary basis sets for accurate two-electron integral approximations

We propose Cholesky decomposition (CD) of the atomic two-electron integral matrix as a robust and general technique for generating auxiliary basis sets for the density fitting approximation. The atomic CD (aCD) auxiliary basis set is calculated on the fly and is not biased toward a particular quantum chemical method. Moreover, the accuracy of the aCD basis set can be controlled with a single parameter.

Accurate ab initio density fitting for multiconfigurational self-consistent field methods

Using Cholesky decomposition and density fitting to approximate the electron repulsion integrals, an implementation of the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) method suitable for large-scale applications is presented. Sample calculations on benzene, diaquo-tetra-mu-acetato-dicopper(II), and diuraniumendofullerene demonstrate that the Cholesky and density fitting approximations allow larger basis sets and larger systems to be treated at the CASSCF level of theory with controllable accuracy. While strict error control is an inherent property of the Cholesky approximation, errors arising from the density fitting approach are managed by using a recently proposed class of auxiliary basis sets constructed from Cholesky decomposition of the atomic electron repulsion integrals.