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We present the first application to real molecular systems of the recently proposed linear-response theory for the density-based basis-set correction method [J. Chem. Phys. 158, 234107 (2023)]. We apply this approach to accelerate the basis-set convergence of excitation energies in the equation-of-motion coupled-cluster singles doubles (EOM-CCSD) method. We use an approximate linear-response framework which neglects the second-order derivative of the basis-set correction density functional and consists in simply adding to the usual Hamiltonian the one-electron potential generated by the first-order derivative of the functional. This additional basis-set correction potential is evaluated at the Hartree-Fock density, leading to a very computationally cheap basis-set correction. We tested this approach over a set of about 30 excitation energies computed for five small molecular systems and found that the excitation energies from the ground state to Rydberg states are the main source of basis-set error. These excitation energies systematically increase when the size of the basis set is increased, suggesting a biased description in favour of the excited state. Despite the simplicity of the present approach, the results obtained with the basis-set corrected EOM-CCSD method are encouraging as they yield to a mean absolute deviation of 0.02 eV for the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set, while it is of 0.04 eV using the standard EOM-CCSD method. This might open the path to an alternative to explicitly correlated approaches to accelerate the basis-set convergence of excitation energies.

This work reports an efficient density-fitting implementation of the density-based basis-set correction (DBBSC) method in the MOLPRO software. This method consists in correcting the energy calculated by a wave-function method with a given basis set by an adapted basis-set correction density functional incorporating the short-range electron correlation effects missing in the basis set, resulting in an accelerated convergence to the complete-basis-set limit. Different basis-set correction density-functional approximations are explored and the complementary-auxiliary-basis-set single-excitation correction is added. The method is tested on a benchmark set of reaction energies at the second-order M{\o}ller-Plesset (MP2) level and a comparison with the explicitly correlated MP2-F12 method is provided. The results show that the DBBSC method greatly accelerates the basis convergence of MP2 reaction energies, without reaching the accuracy of the MP2-F12 method but with a lower computational cost., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 table

The basis-set correction method based on density-functional theory consists in correcting the energy calculated by a wave-function method with a given basis set by a density functional. This basis-set correction density functional incorporates the short-range electron correlation effects missing in the basis set. This results in accelerated basis convergences of ground-state energies to the complete-basis-set limit. In this work, we extend the basis-set correction method to a linear-response formalism for calculating excited-state energies. We give the general linear-response equations, as well as the more specific equations for configuration-interaction wave functions. As a proof of concept, we apply this approach to the calculations of excited-state energies in a one-dimensional two-electron model system with harmonic potential and a Dirac-delta electron-electron interaction. The results obtained with full-configuration-interaction wave functions expanded in a basis of Hermite functions and a local-density-approximation basis-set correction functional show that the present approach does not help in accelerating the basis convergence of excitation energies. However, we show that it significantly accelerates basis convergences of excited-state total energies.

We develop semiclassical approximations for calculating photoabsorption cross sections beyond the continuum threshold in quantum many-body systems. These approximations use the fully quantum-mechanical Wigner function of the ground state and semiclassical expansions only for the part of the cross section depending on the continuum states, thus avoiding the difficult explicit calculation of the continuum states. Even though the approach is general, we test it in electronic-structure theory for the photoionization cross sections of the hydrogen and helium atoms. The results suggest that these semiclassical approximations can be used to obtain good estimates of cross sections at high energy.

We consider the calculations of photoionization spectra and core resonances of open-shell systems using range-separated time-dependent density-functional theory. Specifically, we use the time-dependent range-separated hybrid (TDRSH) scheme, combining a long-range Hartree-Fock (HF) exchange potential and kernel with a short-range potential and kernel from a local density-functional approximation, and the time-dependent locally range-separated hybrid (TDLRSH) scheme, which uses a local range-separation parameter. To efficiently perform the calculations, we formulate a spin-unrestricted linear-response Sternheimer approach in a non-orthogonal B-spline basis set and using appropriate frequency-dependent boundary conditions. We illustrate this approach on the Li atom, which suggests that TDRSH and TDLRSH are adequate simple methods for estimating single-electron photoionization spectra of open-shell systems., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2203.05951

We propose to compute physical properties by Monte Carlo calculations using conditional expectation values. The latter are obtained on top of the usual Monte Carlo sampling by partitioning the physical space in several subspaces or fragments, and subsampling each fragment (i.e., performing side walks) while freezing the environment. No bias is introduced and a zero-variance principle holds in the limit of separability, i.e. when the fragments are independent. In practice, the usual bottleneck of Monte Carlo calculations -- the scaling of the statistical fluctuations as a function of the number of particles N -- is relieved for extensive observables. We illustrate the method in variational Monte Carlo on the 2D Hubbard model and on metallic hydrogen chains using Jastrow-Slater wave functions. A factor O(N) is gained in numerical efficiency.

We explore the merits of linear-response range-separated time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) for the calculation of photoionization spectra. We consider two variants of range-separated TDDFT, namely the timedependent range-separated hybrid (TDRSH) scheme which uses a global range-separation parameter and the timedependent locally range-separated hybrid (TDLRSH) which uses a local range-separation parameter, and compare with standard time-dependent local-density approximation (TDLDA) and time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF). We show how to calculate photoionization spectra with these methods using the Sternheimer approach formulated in a nonorthogonal B-spline basis set with appropriate frequency-dependent boundary conditions. We illustrate these methods on the photoionization spectrum of the Be atom, focusing in particular on the core resonances. Both the TDRSH and TDLRSH photoionization spectra are found to constitute a large improvement over the TDLDA photoionization spectrum and a more modest improvement over the TDHF photoionization spectrum.

We reexamine the recently introduced basis-set correction theory based on density-functional theory consisting in correcting the basis-set incompleteness error of wave-function methods using a density functional. We use a one-dimensional model Hamiltonian with delta-potential interactions which has the advantage of making easier to perform a more systematic analysis than for three-dimensional Coulombic systems while keeping the essence of the slow basis convergence problem of wave-function methods. We provide some mathematical details about the theory and propose a new variant of basis-set correction which has the advantage of being suited to the development of an adapted local-density approximation. We show indeed how to develop a local-density approximation for the basis-set correction functional which is automatically adapted to the basis set employed, without resorting to range-separated density-functional theory as in previous works, but using instead a finite uniform electron gas whose electron-electron interaction is projected on the basis set. The work puts the basis-set correction theory on firmer grounds and provides an interesting strategy for the improvement of this approach.

This work provides a self-consistent extension of the recently proposed density-based basis-set correction method for wave-function electronic-structure calculations [J. Chem. Phys. 149, 194301 (2018)]. In contrast to the previously used approximation where the basis-set correction density functional was a posteriori added to the energy from a wave-function calculation, here the energy minimization is performed including the basis-set correction. Compared to the non-self-consistent approximation, this allows one to lower the total energy and change the wave function under the effect of the basis-set correction. This work addresses two main questions: i) What is the change in total energy compared to the non-self-consistent approximation, and ii) can we obtain better properties, namely dipole moments, with the basis-set corrected wave functions? We implement the present formalism with two different basis-set correction functionals and test it on different molecular systems. The main results of the study are that i) the total energy lowering obtained by the self-consistent approach is extremely small, which justifies the use of the non-self-consistent approximation, and ii) the dipole moments obtained from the basis-set corrected wave functions are improved, being already close to their complete-basis-set values with triple-zeta basis sets. Thus, the present study further confirms the soundness of the density-based basis-set correction scheme.

In this chapter, we provide a review of ground-state Kohn-Sham density-functional theory of electronic systems and some of its extensions, we present exact expressions and constraints for the exchange and correlation density functionals, and we discuss the main families of approximations for the exchange-correlation energy: semilocal approximations, single-determinant hybrid approximations, multideterminant hybrid approximations, dispersion-corrected approximations, as well as orbital-dependent exchange-correlation density functionals. The chapter aims at providing both a consistent bird's-eye view of the field and a detailed description of some of the most used approximations. It is intended to be readable by chemists/physicists and applied mathematicians., Comment: Chapter in the book "Density Functional Theory" edited by Eric Canc\`es and Gero Friesecke

We construct the complementary short-range correlation relativistic local-density-approximation functional to be used in relativistic range-separated density-functional theory based on a Dirac-Coulomb Hamiltonian in the no-pair approximation. For this, we perform relativistic random-phase-approximation calculations of the correlation energy of the relativistic homogeneous electron gas with a modified electron-electron interaction, we study the high-density behavior, and fit the results to a parametrized expression. The obtained functional should eventually be useful for electronic-structure calculations of strongly correlated systems containing heavy elements.

The recently developed semistochastic heat-bath configuration interaction (SHCI) method is a systematically improvable selected configuration interaction plus perturbation theory method capable of giving essentially exact energies for larger systems than is possible with other such methods. We compute SHCI atomization energies for 55 molecules which have been used as a test set in prior studies because their atomization energies are known from experiment. Basis sets from cc-pVDZ to cc-pV5Z are used, totaling up to 500 orbitals and a Hilbert space of $10^{32}$ Slater determinants for the largest molecules. For each basis, an extrapolated energy well within chemical accuracy (1 kcal/mol or 1.6 mHa/mol) of the exact energy for that basis is computed using only a tiny fraction of the entire Hilbert space. We also use our almost exact energies to benchmark coupled-cluster [CCSD(T)] energies. The energies are extrapolated to the complete basis set limit and compared to the experimental atomization energies. The extrapolations are done both without and with a basis-set correction based on density-functional theory. The mean absolute deviations from experiment for these extrapolations are 0.46 kcal/mol and 0.51 kcal/mol, respectively. Orbital optimization methods used to obtain improved convergence of the SHCI energies are also discussed., Comment: 6 figures, 4 supplemental files

We develop relativistic short-range exchange energy functionals for four-component relativistic range-separated density-functional theory using a Dirac-Coulomb Hamiltonian in the no-pair approximation. We show how to improve the short-range local-density approximation exchange functional for large range-separation parameters by using the on-top exchange pair density as a new variable. We also develop a relativistic short-range generalized-gradient approximation exchange functional which further increases the accuracy for small range-separation parameters. Tests on the helium, beryllium, neon, and argon isoelectronic series up to high nuclear charges show that this latter functional gives exchange energies with a maximal relative percentage error of 3 %. The development of this exchange functional represents a step forward for the application of four-component relativistic range-separated density-functional theory to chemical compounds with heavy elements., Comment: Journal of Chemical Physics, American Institute of Physics, In press

We extend to strongly correlated molecular systems the recently introduced basis-set incompleteness correction based on density-functional theory (DFT) [E. Giner et al., J. Chem. Phys. 149, 194301 (2018)]. This basis-set correction relies on a mapping between wave-function calculations in a finite basis set and range-separated DFT (RSDFT) through the definition of an effective non-divergent interaction corresponding to the electron-electron Coulomb interaction projected in the finite basis set. This enables the use of RSDFT-type complementary density functionals to recover the dominant part of the short-range correlation effects missing in this finite basis set. To study both weak and strong correlation regimes we consider the potential energy curves of the H10, N2, O2, and F2 molecules up to the dissociation limit, and we explore various approximations of complementary functionals fulfilling two key properties: spin-multiplet degeneracy (i.e., independence of the energy with respect to the spin projection Sz) and size consistency. Specifically, we investigate the dependence of the functional on different types of on-top pair densities and spin polarizations. The key result of this study is that the explicit dependence on the on-top pair density allows one to completely remove the dependence on any form of spin polarization without any significant loss of accuracy. Quantitatively, we show that the basis-set correction reaches chemical accuracy on atomization energies with triple-zeta quality basis sets for most of the systems studied here. Also, the present basis-set incompleteness correction provides smooth potential energy curves along the whole range of internuclear distances.

We extend the range-separated double-hybrid RSH+MP2 method [J. G. Angyan et al., Phys. Rev. A 72, 012510 (2005)], combining long-range HF exchange and MP2 correlation with a short-range density functional, to a fully self-consistent version using the optimized-effective-potential technique in which the orbitals are obtained from a local potential including the long-range HF and MP2 contributions. We test this approach, that we name RS-OEP2, on a set of small closed-shell atoms and molecules. For the commonly used value of the range-separation parameter $\mu=0.5$ bohr$^{-1}$, we find that self-consistency does not seem to bring any improvement for total energies, ionization potentials, and electronic affinities. However, contrary to the non-self-consistent RSH+MP2 method, the present RS-OEP2 method gives a LUMO energy which physically corresponds to a neutral excitation energy and gives local exchange-correlation potentials which are reasonably good approximations to the corresponding Kohn-Sham quantities. At a finer scale, we find that RS-OEP2 gives largely inaccurate correlation potentials and correlated densities, which points to the need of further improvement of this type of range-separated double hybrids., Comment: Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, American Chemical Society, In press

Similar to other electron correlation methods, many-body perturbation theory methods based on Green functions, such as the so-called $GW$ approximation, suffer from the usual slow convergence of energetic properties with respect to the size of the one-electron basis set. This displeasing feature is due to lack of explicit electron-electron terms modeling the infamous Kato electron-electron cusp and the correlation Coulomb hole around it. Here, we propose a computationally efficient density-based basis set correction based on short-range correlation density functionals which significantly speeds up the convergence of energetics towards the complete basis set limit. The performance of this density-based correction is illustrated by computing the ionization potentials of the twenty smallest atoms and molecules of the GW100 test set at the perturbative $GW$ (or $G_0W_0$) level using increasingly large basis sets. We also compute the ionization potentials of the five canonical nucleobases (adenine, cytosine, thymine, guanine, and uracil) and show that, here again, a significant improvement is obtained., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures (supporting information available)

By combining extrapolated selected configuration interaction (sCI) energies obtained with the CIPSI (Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection made Iteratively) algorithm with the recently proposed short-range density-functional correction for basis-set incompleteness [Giner et al.,J. Chem. Phys. 2018, 149, 194301], we show that one can get chemically accurate vertical and adiabatic excitation energies with, typically, augmented double-$\zeta$ basis sets. We illustrate the present approach on various types of excited states (valence, Rydberg, and double excitations) in several small organic molecules (methylene, water, ammonia, carbon dimer and ethylene). The present study clearly evidences that special care has to be taken with very diffuse excited states where the present correction does not catch the radial incompleteness of the one-electron basis set., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures

We construct range-separated double-hybrid schemes which combine coupled-cluster or random-phase approximations with a density functional based on a two-parameter Coulomb-attenuating-method-like decomposition of the electron-electron interaction. We find that the addition of a fraction of short-range electron-electron interaction in the wave-function part of the calculation is globally beneficial for the range-separated double-hybrid scheme involving a variant of the random-phase approximation with exchange terms. Even though the latter scheme is globally as accurate as the corresponding scheme employing only second-order M{{\o}}ller-Plesset perturbation theory for atomization energies, reaction barrier heights, and weak intermolecular interactions of small molecules, it is more accurate for the more complicated case of the benzene dimer in the stacked configuration. The present range-separated double-hybrid scheme employing a random-phase approximation thus represents a new member in the family of double hybrids with minimal empiricism which could be useful for general chemical applications., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1804.03373

We report a universal density-based basis-set incompleteness correction that can be applied to any wave function method. The present correction, which appropriately vanishes in the complete basis set (CBS) limit, relies on short-range correlation density functionals (with multi-determinant reference) from range-separated density-functional theory (RS-DFT) to estimate the basis-set incompleteness error. Contrary to conventional RS-DFT schemes which require an \textit{ad hoc} range-separation \textit{parameter} $\mu$, the key ingredient here is a range-separation \textit{function} $\mu(\bf{r})$ that automatically adapts to the spatial non-homogeneity of the basis-set incompleteness error. As illustrative examples, we show how this density-based correction allows us to obtain CCSD(T) atomization and correlation energies near the CBS limit for the G2 set of molecules with compact Gaussian basis sets., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures and 1 table (supporting information available)

We investigate the performance of the range-separated hybrid (RSH) scheme, which combines long-range Hartree-Fock (HF) and a short-range density-functional approximation (DFA), for calculating photoexcitation/photoionization spectra of the H and He atoms, using a B-spline basis set in order to correctly describe the continuum part of the spectra. The study of these simple systems allows us to quantify the influence on the spectra of the errors coming from the short-range exchange-correlation DFA and from the missing long-range correlation in the RSH scheme. We study the differences between using the long-range HF exchange (nonlocal) potential and the long-range exact exchange (local) potential. Contrary to the former, the latter supports a series of Rydberg states and gives reasonable photoexcitation/photoionization spectra, even without applying linear-response theory. The most accurate spectra are obtained with the linear-response time-dependent range-separated hybrid (TDRSH) scheme. In particular, for the He atom at the optimal value of the range-separation parameter, TDRSH gives slightly more accurate photoexcitation and photoioniza-tion spectra than standard linear-response time-dependent HF. More generally, the present work shows the potential of range-separated density-functional theory for calculating linear and nonlinear optical properties involving continuum states.

\textsc{Quantum Package} is an open-source programming environment for quantum chemistry specially designed for wave function methods. Its main goal is the development of determinant-driven selected configuration interaction (sCI) methods and multi-reference second-order perturbation theory (PT2). The determinant-driven framework allows the programmer to include any arbitrary set of determinants in the reference space, hence providing greater methodological freedoms. The sCI method implemented in \textsc{Quantum Package} is based on the CIPSI (Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection made Iteratively) algorithm which complements the variational sCI energy with a PT2 correction. Additional external plugins have been recently added to perform calculations with multireference coupled cluster theory and range-separated density-functional theory. All the programs are developed with the IRPF90 code generator, which simplifies collaborative work and the development of new features. \textsc{Quantum Package} strives to allow easy implementation and experimentation of new methods, while making parallel computation as simple and efficient as possible on modern supercomputer architectures. Currently, the code enables, routinely, to realize runs on roughly 2\,000 CPU cores, with tens of millions of determinants in the reference space. Moreover, we have been able to push up to 12\,288 cores in order to test its parallel efficiency. In the present manuscript, we also introduce some key new developments: i) a renormalized second-order perturbative correction for efficient extrapolation to the full CI limit, and ii) a stochastic version of the CIPSI selection performed simultaneously to the PT2 calculation at no extra cost., Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures

We introduce an approximation to the short-range correlation energy functional with multide-terminantal reference involved in a variant of range-separated density-functional theory. This approximation is a local functional of the density, the density gradient, and the on-top pair density, which locally interpolates between the standard Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof correlation functional at vanishing range-separation parameter and the known exact asymptotic expansion at large range-separation parameter. When combined with (selected) configuration-interaction calculations for the long-range wave function, this approximation gives accurate dissociation energy curves of the H2, Li2, and Be2 molecules, and thus appears as a promising way to accurately account for static correlation in range-separated density-functional theory., Comment: The Journal of Chemical Physics, In press

The present work proposes to use density-functional theory (DFT) to correct for the basis-set error of wave-function theory (WFT). One of the key ideas developed here is to define a range-separation parameter which automatically adapts to a given basis set. The derivation of the exact equations are based on the Levy-Lieb formulation of DFT, which helps us to define a complementary functional which corrects uniquely for the basis-set error of WFT. The coupling of DFT and WFT is done through the definition of a real-space representation of the electron-electron Coulomb operator projected in a one-particle basis set. Such an effective interaction has the particularity to coincide with the exact electron-electron interaction in the limit of a complete basis set, and to be finite at the electron-electron coalescence point when the basis set is incomplete. The non-diverging character of the effective interaction allows one to define a mapping with the long-range interaction used in the context of range-separated DFT and to design practical approximations for the unknown complementary functional. Here, a local-density approximation is proposed for both full-configuration-interaction (FCI) and selected configuration-interaction approaches. Our theory is numerically tested to compute total energies and ionization potentials for a series of atomic systems. The results clearly show that the DFT correction drastically improves the basis-set convergence of both the total energies and the energy differences. For instance, a sub kcal/mol accuracy is obtained from the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set with the method proposed here when an aug-cc-pV5Z basis set barely reaches such a level of accuracy at the near FCI level.

A range-separated double-hybrid (RSDH) scheme which generalizes the usual range-separated hybrids and double hybrids is developed. This scheme consistently uses a two-parameter Coulomb-attenuating-method (CAM)-like decomposition of the electron-electron interaction for both exchange and correlation in order to combine Hartree-Fock exchange and second-order M{{\o}}ller-Plesset (MP2) correlation with a density functional. The RSDH scheme relies on an exact theory which is presented in some detail. Several semi-local approximations are developed for the short-range exchange-correlation density functional involved in this scheme. After finding optimal values for the two parameters of the CAM-like decomposition, the RSDH scheme is shown to have a relatively small basis dependence and to provide atomization energies, reaction barrier heights, and weak intermolecular interactions globally more accurate or comparable to range-separated MP2 or standard MP2. The RSDH scheme represents a new family of double hybrids with minimal empiricism which could be useful for general chemical applications., Comment: Journal of Chemical Physics, American Institute of Physics, In press

A key goal in quantum chemistry methods, whether ab initio or otherwise, is to achieve size consistency. In this manuscript we formulate the related idea of "Casimir-Polder size consistency" that manifests in long-range dispersion energetics. We show that local approximations in time-dependent density functional theory dispersion energy calculations violate the consistency condition because of incorrect treatment of highly non-local "xc kernel" physics, by up to 10% in our tests on closed-shell atoms., Comment: Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, American Chemical Society, 2017

A G{\"o}rling-Levy (GL)-based perturbation theory along the range-separated adiabatic connection is assessed for the calculation of electronic excitation energies. In comparison with the Rayleigh-Schr{\"o}dinger (RS)-based perturbation theory introduced in a previous work [E. Rebolini, J. Toulouse, A. M. Teale, T. Helgaker, A. Savin, Mol. Phys. 113, 1740 (2015)], this GL-based perturbation theory keeps the ground-state density constant at each order and thus gives the correct ionization energy at each order. Excitation energies up to first order in the perturbation have been calculated numerically for the helium and beryllium atoms and the hydrogen molecule without introducing any density-functional approximations. In comparison with the RS-based perturbation theory, the present GL-based perturbation theory gives much more accurate excitation energies for Rydberg states but similar excitation energies for valence states.

We propose a method for obtaining effective lifetimes of scattering electronic states for avoiding the artificially confinement of the wave function due to the use of incomplete basis sets in time-dependent electronic-structure calculations of atoms and molecules. In this method, using a fitting procedure, the lifetimes are extracted from the spatial asymptotic decay of the approximate scattering wave functions obtained with a given basis set. The method is based on a rigorous analysis of the complex-energy solutions of the Schr{\"o}dinger equation. It gives lifetimes adapted to any given basis set without using any empirical parameters. The method can be considered as an ab initio version of the heuristic lifetime model of Klinkusch et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 131, 114304 (2009)]. The method is validated on the H and He atoms using Gaussian-type basis sets for calculation of high-harmonic-generation spectra.

We present the extension of variational Monte Carlo (VMC) to the calculation of electronic excitation energies and oscillator strengths using time-dependent linear-response theory. By exploiting the analogy existing between the linear method for wave-function optimisation and the generalised eigenvalue equation of linear-response theory, we formulate the equations of linear-response VMC (LR-VMC). This LR-VMC approach involves the first-and second-order derivatives of the wave function with respect to the parameters. We perform first tests of the LR-VMC method within the Tamm-Dancoff approximation using single-determinant Jastrow-Slater wave functions with different Slater basis sets on some singlet and triplet excitations of the beryllium atom. Comparison with reference experimental data and with configuration-interaction-singles (CIS) results shows that LR-VMC generally outperforms CIS for excitation energies and is thus a promising approach for calculating electronic excited-state properties of atoms and molecules., Comment: Advances in Quantum Chemistry, 2017, Novel Electronic Structure Theory: General Innovations and Strongly Correlated Systems

We introduce an orbital-optimized double-hybrid (DH) scheme using the optimized-effective-potential (OEP) method. The orbitals are optimized using a local potential corresponding to the complete exchange-correlation energy expression including the second-order M{{\o}}ller-Plesset (MP2) correlation contribution. We have implemented a one-parameter version of this OEP-based self-consistent DH scheme using the BLYP density-functional approximation and compared it to the corresponding non-self-consistent DH scheme for calculations on a few closed-shell atoms and molecules. While the OEP-based self-consistency does not provide any improvement for the calculations of ground-state total energies and ionization potentials, it does improve the accuracy of electron affinities and restores the meaning of the LUMO orbital energy as being connected to a neutral excitation energy. Moreover, the OEP-based self-consistent DH scheme provides reasonably accurate exchange-correlation potentials and correlated densities., Comment: in The Journal of Chemical Physics, American Institute of Physics, 2016

We investigate fractional-charge and fractional-spin errors in range-separated density-functional theory. Specifically, we consider the range-separated hybrid (RSH) method which combines long-range Hartree-Fock (HF) exchange with a short-range semilocal exchange-correlation density functional, and the RSH+MP2 method which adds long-range second-order M{{\o}}ller-Plesset (MP2) correlation. Results on atoms and molecules show that the fractional-charge errors obtained in RSH are much smaller than in the standard Kohn-Sham (KS) scheme applied with semilocal or hybrid approximations, and also generally smaller than in the standard HF method. The RSH+MP2 method tends to have smaller fractional-charge errors than standard MP2 for the most diffuse systems, but larger fractional-charge errors for the more compact systems. Even though the individual contributions to the fractional-spin errors in the H atom coming from the short-range exchange and correlation density-functional approximations are smaller than the corresponding contributions for the full-range exchange and correlation density-functional approximations, RSH gives fractional-spin errors that are larger than in the standard KS scheme and only slightly smaller than in standard HF. Adding long-range MP2 correlation only leads to infinite fractional-spin errors. This work clarifies the successes and limitations of range-separated density-functional theory approaches for eliminating self-interaction and static-correlation errors.

We explore the computation of high-harmonic generation spectra by means of Gaussian basis sets in approaches propagating the time-dependent Schr{\"o}dinger equation. We investigate the efficiency of Gaussian functions specifically designed for the description of the continuum proposed by Kaufmann et al. [J. Phys. B 22, 2223 (1989)]. We assess the range of applicability of this approach by studying the hydrogen atom, i.e. the simplest atom for which "exact" calculations on a grid can be performed. We notably study the effect of increasing the basis set cardinal number, the number of diffuse basis functions, and the number of Gaussian pseudo-continuum basis functions for various laser parameters. Our results show that the latter significantly improve the description of the low-lying continuum states, and provide a satisfactory agreement with grid calculationsfor laser wavelengths $\lambda$0 = 800 and 1064 nm. The Kaufmann continuum functions therefore appear as a promising way of constructing Gaussian basis sets for studying molecular electron dynamics in strong laser fields using time-dependent quantum-chemistry approaches.

We explore the use in quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) of trial wave functions consisting of a Jastrow factor multiplied by a truncated configuration-interaction (CI) expansion in Slater determinants obtained from a CI perturbatively selected iteratively (CIPSI) calculation. In the CIPSI algorithm, the CI expansion is iteratively enlarged by selecting the best determinants using perturbation theory, which provides an optimal and automatic way of constructing truncated CI expansions approaching the full CI limit. We perform a systematic study of variational Monte Carlo (VMC) and fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) total energies of first-row atoms from B to Ne with different levels of optimization of the parameters (Jastrow parameters, coefficients of the determinants, and orbital parameters) in these trial wave functions. The results show that the reoptimization of the coefficients of the determinants in VMC (together with the Jastrow factor) leads to an important lowering of both VMC and DMC total energies, and to their monotonic convergence with the number of determinants. In addition, we show that the reoptimization of the orbitals is also important in both VMC and DMC for the Be atom when using a large basis set. These reoptimized Jastrow-CIPSI wave functions appear as promising, systematically improvable trial wave functions for QMC calculations., Comment: in Molecular Physics, Taylor \& Francis, 2016

We present a range-separated linear-response time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) which combines a density-functional approximation for the short-range response kernel and a frequency-dependent second-order Bethe-Salpeter approximation for the long-range response kernel. This approach goes beyond the adiabatic approximation usually used in linear-response TDDFT and aims at improving the accuracy of calculations of electronic excitation energies of molecular systems. A detailed derivation of the frequency-dependent second-order Bethe-Salpeter correlation kernel is given using many-body Green-function theory. Preliminary tests of this range-separated TDDFT method are presented for the calculation of excitation energies of the He and Be atoms and small molecules (H2, N2, CO2, H2CO, and C2H4). The results suggest that the addition of the long-range second-order Bethe-Salpeter correlation kernel overall slightly improves the excitation energies., Comment: in The Journal of Chemical Physics, American Institute of Physics, 2016

We provide a pedagogical introduction to the two main variants of real-space quantum Monte Carlo methods for electronic-structure calculations: variational Monte Carlo (VMC) and diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC). Assuming no prior knowledge on the subject, we review in depth the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm used in VMC for sampling the square of an approximate wave function, discussing details important for applications to electronic systems. We also review in detail the more sophisticated DMC algorithm within the fixed-node approximation, introduced to avoid the infamous Fermionic sign problem, which allows one to sample a more accurate approximation to the ground-state wave function. Throughout this review, we discuss the statistical methods used for evaluating expectation values and statistical uncertainties. In particular, we show how to estimate nonlinear functions of expectation values and their statistical uncertainties., Comment: Advances in Quantum Chemistry, 2015, Electron Correlation in Molecules -- ab initio Beyond Gaussian Quantum Chemistry, pp.0000

Quantum chemistry methods exploiting density-functional approximations for short-range electron-electron interactions and second-order M{{\o}}ller-Plesset (MP2) perturbation theory for long-range electron-electron interactions have been implemented for periodic systems using Gaussian-type basis functions and the local correlation framework. The performance of these range-separated double hybrids has been benchmarked on a significant set of systems including rare-gas, molecular, ionic, and covalent crystals. The use of spin-component-scaled MP2 for the long-range part has been tested as well. The results show that the value of $\mu$ = 0.5 bohr^{--1} for the range-separation parameter usually used for molecular systems is also a reasonable choice for solids. Overall, these range-separated double hybrids provide a good accuracy for binding energies using basis sets of moderate sizes such as cc-pVDZ and aug-cc-pVDZ.

Range-separated density-functional theory is an alternative approach to Kohn-Sham density-functional theory. The strategy of range-separated density-functional theory consists in separating the Coulomb electron-electron interaction into long-range and short-range components, and treating the long-range part by an explicit many-body wave-function method and the short-range part by a density-functional approximation. Among the advantages of using many-body methods for the long-range part of the electron-electron interaction is that they are much less sensitive to the one-electron atomic basis compared to the case of the standard Coulomb interaction. Here, we provide a detailed study of the basis convergence of range-separated density-functional theory. We study the convergence of the partial-wave expansion of the long-range wave function near the electron-electron coalescence. We show that the rate of convergence is exponential with respect to the maximal angular momentum L for the long-range wave function, whereas it is polynomial for the case of the Coulomb interaction. We also study the convergence of the long-range second-order M{{\o}}ller-Plesset correlation energy of four systems (He, Ne, N2, and H2O) with the cardinal number X of the Dunning basis sets cc-p(C)VXZ, and find that the error in the correlation energy is best fitted by an exponential in X. This leads us to propose a three-point complete-basis-set extrapolation scheme for range-separated density-functional theory based on an exponential formula.

Within exact electron density-functional theory, we investigate Kohn-Sham (KS) potentials, orbital energies, and non-interacting kinetic energies of the fractional ions of Li, C and F. We use quantum Monte Carlo densities as input, which are then fitted, interpolated at non-integer electron numbers $N$, and inverted to produce accurate KS potentials $v_s^N(r)$. We study the dependence of the KS potential on $N$, and in particular we numerically reproduce the theoretically predicted spatially constant discontinuity of $v_s^N(r)$ as $N$ passes through an integer. We further show that, for all the cases considered, the inner orbital energies and the non-interacting kinetic energy are nearly piecewise linear functions of $N$. This leads us to propose a simple approximation of the KS potential $v_s^N(r)$ at any fractional electron number $N$ which uses only quantities of the systems with the adjacent integer electron numbers.

We test the performance of a number of two- and one-parameter double-hybrid approximations, combining semilocal exchange-correlation density functionals with periodic local second-order M{\o}ller-Plesset (LMP2) perturbation theory, for calculating lattice energies of a set of molecular crystals: urea, formamide, ammonia, and carbon dioxide. All double-hybrid methods perform better on average than the corresponding Kohn-Sham calculations with the same functionals, but generally not better than standard LMP2. The one-parameter double-hybrid approximations based on the PBEsol density functional gives lattice energies per molecule with an accuracy of about 6 kJ/mol, which is similar to the accuracy of LMP2. This conclusion is further verified on molecular dimers and on the hydrogen cyanide crystal., Comment: Journal of Chemical Physics (2014)

Range-separated methods combining a short-range density functional with long-range random phase approximations RPAs with or without exchange response kernel are tested on rare-gas dimers and the S22 benchmark set of weakly interacting complexes of Jurecka et al. [Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 8, 1985 (2006 )] . The methods are also compared to full-range RPA approaches. Both range separation and inclusion of the Hartree-Fock exchange kernel largely improve the accuracy of intermolecular interaction energies. The best results are obtained with the method called RSH+RPAx, which yields interaction energies for the S22 set with an estimated mean absolute error of about 0.5-0.6 kcal/mol, corresponding to a mean absolute percentage error of about 7%-9% depending on the reference interaction energies used. In particular, the RSH+RPAx method is found to be overall more accurate than the range-separated method based on long-range second-order M{\o}ller-Plesset MP2 perturbation theory RSH+MP2 .

We explore several random phase approximation (RPA) correlation energy variants within the adiabatic-connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem approach. These variants differ in the way the exchange interactions are treated. One of these variants, named dRPA-II, is original to this work and closely resembles the second-order screened exchange (SOSEX) method. We discuss and clarify the connections among different RPA formulations. We derive the spin-adapted forms of all the variants for closed-shell systems, and test them on a few atomic and molecular systems with and without range separation of the electron-electron interaction.

We extend the previously proposed one-parameter double-hybrid density-functional theory [K. Sharkas, J. Toulouse, and A. Savin, J. Chem. Phys. 134, 064113 (2011)] to meta-generalized-gradient-approximation (meta-GGA) exchange-correlation density functionals. We construct several variants of one-parameter double-hybrid approximations using the Tao-Perdew-Staroverov-Scuseria (TPSS) meta-GGA functional and test them on test sets of atomization energies and reaction barrier heights. The most accurate variant uses the uniform coordinate scaling of the density and of the kinetic energy density in the correlation functional, and improves over both standard Kohn-Sham TPSS and second-order Moller-Plesset calculations., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables

We assess a variant of linear-response range-separated time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT), combining a long-range Hartree-Fock (HF) exchange kernel with a short-range adiabatic exchange-correlation kernel in the local-density approximation (LDA) for calculating isotropic C6 dispersion coefficients of homodimers of a number of closed-shell atoms and small molecules. This range-separated TDDFT tends to give underestimated C6 coefficients of small molecules with a mean absolute percentage error of about 5%, a slight improvement over standard TDDFT in the adiabatic LDA which tends to overestimate them with a mean absolute percentage error of 8%, but close to time-dependent Hartree-Fock which has a mean absolute percentage error of about 6%. These results thus show that introduction of long-range HF exchange in TDDFT has a small but beneficial impact on the values of C6 coefficients. It also confirms that the present variant of range-separated TDDFT is a reasonably accurate method even using only a LDA-type density functional and without adding an explicit treatment of long-range correlation.

We study linear-response time-dependent density-functional theory (DFT) based on the single-determinant range-separated hybrid (RSH) scheme, i.e. combining a long-range Hartree-Fock exchange kernel with a short-range DFT exchange-correlation kernel, for calculating electronic excitation energies of molecular systems. It is an alternative to the long-range correction (LC) scheme which has a standard full-range DFT correlation kernel instead of only a short-range one. We discuss the local-density approximation (LDA) to the short-range exchange-correlation kernel, and assess the performance of the linear-response RSH scheme for singlet-singlet and singlet-triplet valence and Rydberg excitations in the N2, CO, H2CO, C2H4, and C6H6 molecules, and for the first charge-transfer excitation in the C2H4-C2F4 dimer. The introduction of long-range HF exchange corrects the underestimation of charge-transfer and high-lying Rydberg excitation energies obtained with standard (semi)local density-functional approximations, but also leads to underestimated excitation energies to low-lying spin-triplet valence states which can be cured by the Tamm-Dancoff approximation. This work thus suggests that the present linear-response RSH scheme is a reasonable starting approximation for describing electronic excitation energies, even before adding an explicit treatment of long-range correlation.

We review the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) approach to the calculation of electronic excitation energies of molecular systems. We recall the general Green's function many-theory formalism and give the working equations of the BSE approach within the static GW approximation with and without spin adaptation in an orbital basis. We apply the method to the pedagogical example of the H2 molecule in a minimal basis, testing the effects of the choice of the starting one-particle Green's function. Using the non-interacting one-particle Green's function leads to incorrect energy curves for the first singlet and triplet excited states in the dissociation limit. Starting from the exact one-particle Green's function leads to a qualitatively correct energy curve for the first singlet excited state, but still an incorrect energy curve for the triplet excited state. Using the exact one-particle Green's function in the BSE approach within the static GW approximation also leads to a number of additional excitations, all of them being spurious except for one which can be identified as a double excitation corresponding to the second singlet excited state.

We propose a multiconfigurational hybrid density-functional theory which rigorously combines a multiconfiguration self-consistent-field calculation with a density-functional approximation based on a linear decomposition of the electron-electron interaction. This gives a straightforward extension of the usual hybrid approximations by essentially adding a fraction \lambda of exact static correlation in addition to the fraction \lambda of exact exchange. Test calculations on the cycloaddition reactions of ozone with ethylene or acetylene and the dissociation of diatomic molecules with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) and Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr (BLYP) density functionals show that a good value of \lambda is 0.25, as in the usual hybrid approximations. The results suggest that the proposed multiconfigurational hybrid approximations can improve over usual density-functional calculations for situations with strong static correlation effects., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

We provide a rationale for a new class of double-hybrid approximations introduced by Br\'emond and Adamo [J. Chem. Phys. 135, 024106 (2011)] which combine an exchange-correlation density functional with Hartree-Fock exchange weighted by $\l$ and second-order M{\o}ller-Plesset (MP2) correlation weighted by $\l^3$. We show that this double-hybrid model can be understood in the context of the density-scaled double-hybrid model proposed by Sharkas et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 134, 064113 (2011)], as approximating the density-scaled correlation functional $E_c[n_{1/\l}]$ by a linear function of $\l$, interpolating between MP2 at $\l=0$ and a density-functional approximation at $\l=1$. Numerical results obtained with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof density functional confirms the relevance of this double-hybrid model., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Journal of Chemical Physics

We explore different variants of the random phase approximation (RPA) to the correlation energy derived from closed-shell ring-diagram approximations to coupled cluster doubles theory. We implement these variants in range-separated density-functional theory, i.e. by combining the long-range random phase approximations with short-range density-functional approximations. We perform tests on the rare-gas dimers He_2, Ne_2, and Ar_2, and on the weakly interacting molecular complexes of the S22 set of Jurecka et al. [Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 8, 1985 (2006)]. The two best variants correspond to the ones originally proposed by Szabo and Ostlund [J. Chem. Phys. 67, 4351 (1977)]. With range separation, they reach mean absolute errors on the equilibrium interaction energies of the S22 set of about 0.4 kcal/mol, corresponding to mean absolute percentage errors of about 4 %, with the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set.

When using Hartree-Fock (HF) trial wave functions in quantum Monte Carlo calculations, one faces, in case of HF instabilities, the HF symmetry dilemma in choosing between the symmetry-adapted solution of higher HF energy and symmetry-broken solutions of lower HF energies. In this work, we have examined the HF symmetry dilemma in hydrogen rings which present singlet instabilities for sufficiently large rings. We have found that the symmetry-adapted HF wave function gives a lower energy both in variational Monte Carlo and in fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo. This indicates that the symmetry-adapted wave function has more accurate nodes than the symmetry-broken wave functions, and thus suggests that spatial symmetry is an important criterion for selecting good trial wave functions., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, to appear in "Advances in Quantum Monte Carlo", ACS

We consider the use in quantum Monte Carlo calculations of two types of valence bond wave functions based on strictly localized active orbitals, namely valence bond self-consistent-field (VBSCF) and breathing-orbital valence bond (BOVB) wave functions. Complemented by a Jastrow factor, these Jastrow-Valence-Bond wave functions are tested by computing the equilibrium well depths of the four diatomic molecules C$_2$, N$_2$, O$_2$, and F$_2$ in both variational Monte Carlo (VMC) and diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC). We show that it is possible to design compact wave functions based on chemical grounds that are capable of describing both static and dynamic electron correlation. These wave functions can be systematically improved by inclusion of valence bond structures corresponding to additional bonding patterns.

We provide a rigorous derivation of a class of double-hybrid approximations, combining Hartree-Fock exchange and second-order Moller-Plesset correlation with a semilocal exchange-correlation density functional. These double-hybrid approximations contain only one empirical parameter and use a density-scaled correlation energy functional. Neglecting density scaling leads to a one-parameter version of the standard double-hybrid approximations. We assess the performance of these double-hybrid schemes on representative test sets of atomization energies and reaction barrier heights, and we compare to other hybrid approximations, including range-separated hybrids. Our best one-parameter double-hybrid approximation, called 1DH-BLYP, roughly reproduces the two parameters of the standard B2-PLYP or B2GP-PLYP double-hybrid approximations, which shows that these methods are not only empirically close to an optimum for general chemical applications but are also theoretically supported.