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This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchange-correlation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction and variational reduced density-matrix methods. Methods highlighted in Q-Chem 5 include a suite of tools for modeling core-level spectroscopy, methods for describing metastable resonances, methods for computing vibronic spectra, the nuclear-electronic orbital method, and several different energy decomposition analysis techniques. High-performance capabilities including multithreaded parallelism and support for calculations on graphics processing units are described. Q-Chem boasts a community of well over 100 active academic developers, and the continuing evolution of the software is supported by an "open teamware" model and an increasingly modular design.

In this paper, we investigate different non-orthogonal generalizations of the configuration interaction with single substitutions (CIS) method for the calculation of core-excited states. Fully non-orthogonal CIS (NOCIS) has been described previously for species with singlet and doublet ground states, and this paper reports the extension to molecules in their triplet ground state. In addition to NOCIS, we present a novel method, one-center NOCIS (1C-NOCIS), for open-shell molecules which is intermediate between NOCIS and the computationally less demanding static exchange approximation (STEX). We explore this hierarchy of spin-pure methods for core excitations of molecules with singlet, doublet, and triplet ground states. We conclude that, while NOCIS provides the best results and preserves the spatial symmetry of the wavefunction, 1C-NOCIS retains much of the accuracy of NOCIS at a dramatically reduced cost. For molecules with closed-shell ground states, STEX and 1C-NOCIS are identical.

In this paper, we present an open-shell extension of the non-orthogonal configuration interaction singles (NOCIS) method for the calculation of core-excited states, intended for peak assignment in XAS spectra of doublet radicals. This extension requires the consideration of additional configurations due to the singly occupied open-shell orbital, and the addition of essential orbital relaxation effects is found to provide a significant improvement on standard CIS, while maintaining the desirable properties of spin purity, variationality, and size consistency. We apply this method to the calculation of core excitations for several open-shell molecules and demonstrate that it performs competitively with other available methods, despite a lack of dynamic correlation. In particular, relative to CVS-ADC(2)-x, RMS error is reduced by a factor of 6 over usual orthogonal CIS and is comparable to time-dependent density functional theory with the best short-range corrected functionals.

In our recent publication,1 we incorrectly stated some of the CIS and TDDFT k-edge excitations. Specifically the errors were in the CIS k-edge for all molecules except C2N2 and C2H6 and the TDDFT k-edge for only C2H2, N2, CO2 O, F2, and C2H2, all of which are shown in Table II of the original paper. A corrected version of that table can be found below. This changes our results slightly in that the RMSEs of the CIS and the TDDFT results are slightly reduced, but it does not change the primary conclusion that NOCIS is a promising method for calculating core excitations though it lacks dynamical correlation. (Table Presented).

In this paper, we present the non-orthogonal configuration interaction singles (NOCIS) method for calculating core-excited states of closed-shell molecules. NOCIS is a black-box variant of NOCI, which uses A different core-ionized determinants for a molecule with A atoms of a given element to form single substitutions. NOCIS is a variational, spin-pure, size-consistent ab initio method that dramatically improves on standard CIS by capturing essential orbital relaxation effects, in addition to essential configuration interaction. We apply it to the calculation of core-excitations for several smaller molecules and demonstrate that it performs competitively with other Hartree-Fock and DFT-based methods. We also benchmark it in several basis sets.

The method of complex basis functions is applied to molecular resonances at correlated levels of theory. Møller-Plesset perturbation theory at second order and equation-of-motion electron attachment coupled-cluster singles and doubles (EOM-EA-CCSD) methods based on a non-Hermitian self-consistent-field reference are used to compute accurate Siegert energies for shape resonances in small molecules including N2-, CO-, CO2-, and CH2O-. Analytic continuation of complex ?-trajectories is used to compute Siegert energies, and the ?-trajectories of energy differences are found to yield more consistent results than those of total energies. The ability of such methods to accurately compute complex potential energy surfaces is investigated, and the possibility of using EOM-EA-CCSD for Feshbach resonances is explored in the context of e-helium scattering.

The computation of Siegert energies by analytic continuation of bound state energies has recently been applied to shape resonances in polyatomic molecules by several authors. We critically evaluate a recently proposed analytic continuation method based on low order (type III) Padé approximants as well as an analytic continuation method based on high order (type II) Padé approximants. We compare three classes of stabilizing potentials: Coulomb potentials, Gaussian potentials, and attenuated Coulomb potentials. These methods are applied to a model potential where the correct answer is known exactly and to the Πg2 shape resonance of N2- which has been studied extensively by other methods. Both the choice of stabilizing potential and method of analytic continuation prove to be important to the accuracy of the results. We conclude that an attenuated Coulomb potential is the most effective of the three for bound state analytic continuation methods. With the proper potential, such methods show promise for algorithmic determination of the positions and widths of molecular shape resonances.

Simulations of the n = 2 absorption spectra of HeN (N = 70, 150, 231, 300) clusters are reported, with nuclear configurations sampled by path integral molecular dynamics. The electronic structure is treated by a new approach, ALMO-CIS+CT, which is a formulation of configuration interaction singles (CIS) based on absolutely localized molecular orbitals (ALMOs). The method generalizes the previously reported ALMO-CIS model [K. D. Closser et al. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 11, 5791 (2015)] to include spatially localized charge transfer (CT) effects. It is designed to recover large numbers of excited states in atomic and molecular clusters, such as the entire n = 2 Rydberg band in helium clusters. ALMO-CIS+CT is shown to recover most of the error caused by neglecting charge transfer in ALMO-CIS and has comparable accuracy to standard CIS for helium clusters. For the n = 2 band, CT stabilizes states towards the blue edge by up to 0.5 eV. ALMO-CIS+CT retains the formal cubic scaling of ALMO-CIS with respect to system size. With improvements to the implementation over that originally reported for ALMO-CIS, ALMO-CIS+CT is able to treat helium clusters with hundreds of atoms using modest computing resources. A detailed simulation of the absorption spectra associated with the 2s and 2p bands of helium clusters up to 300 atoms is reported, using path integral molecular dynamics with a spherical boundary condition to generate atomic configurations at 3 K. The main features of experimentally reported fluorescence excitation spectra for helium clusters are reproduced.

This work describes the implementation and applications of non-Hermitian self-consistent field (NH-SCF) theory with complex basis functions for the ab initio computation of positions and widths of shape resonances in molecules. We utilize both the restricted open-shell and the previously unexplored spin-unrestricted variants to compute Siegert energies of several anionic shape resonances in small diatomic and polyatomic molecules including carbon tetrafluoride which has been the subject of several recent experimental studies. The computation of general molecular properties from a non-Hermitian wavefunction is discussed, and a density-based analysis is applied to the (2)B1 shape resonance in formaldehyde. Spin-unrestricted NH-SCF is used to compute a complex potential energy surface for the carbon monoxide anion which correctly describes dissociation.

The method of complex basis functions for computing positions and widths of molecular resonances is revisited. An open-ended and efficient implementation is described. The basis set requirements of the complex basis are investigated within the computationally inexpensive static-exchange approximation, and the results of this investigation lead to a hierarchy of basis sets for complex basis function calculations on small molecules. These basis sets are then applied in static-exchange calculations on some larger molecules with multiple low energy shape resonances: carbon tetrafluoride, benzene, pyridine, pyrimidine, pyrazine, and s-triazine. The results indicate that more sophisticated methods using complex basis functions are worth pursuing in the search for accurate and computationally feasible methods for computing resonance energies in molecular systems.

Simulations of the n = 2 absorption spectra of HeN (N = 70, 150, 231, 300) clusters are reported, with nuclear configurations sampled by path integral molecular dynamics. The electronic structure is treated by a new approach, ALMO-CIS+CT, which is a formulation of configuration interaction singles (CIS) based on absolutely localized molecular orbitals (ALMOs). The method generalizes the previously reported ALMO-CIS model [K. D. Closser et al. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 11, 5791 (2015)] to include spatially localized charge transfer (CT) effects. It is designed to recover large numbers of excited states in atomic and molecular clusters, such as the entire n = 2 Rydberg band in helium clusters. ALMO-CIS+CT is shown to recover most of the error caused by neglecting charge transfer in ALMO-CIS and has comparable accuracy to standard CIS for helium clusters. For the n = 2 band, CT stabilizes states towards the blue edge by up to 0.5 eV. ALMO-CIS+CT retains the formal cubic scaling of ALMO-CIS with respect to system size. With improvements to the implementation over that originally reported for ALMO-CIS, ALMO-CIS+CT is able to treat helium clusters with hundreds of atoms using modest computing resources. A detailed simulation of the absorption spectra associated with the 2s and 2p bands of helium clusters up to 300 atoms is reported, using path integral molecular dynamics with a spherical boundary condition to generate atomic configurations at 3 K. The main features of experimentally reported fluorescence excitation spectra for helium clusters are reproduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we apply and expand the knowledge developed in the case of the H atom to describe high-harmonic generation (HHG) for the H2molecule by using time-dependent configuration interaction with single excitations. The implications of using a finite atomic orbital basis set and the impact of a heuristic lifetime model which addresses ionisation losses are discussed. We also examine the influence of the angular momentum of the basis on the computed HHG spectra. Moreover, we discuss the impact of adding diffuse functions and ghost atoms in different geometrical configurations around the molecule. The effects of these additional centres on the HHG spectra are correlated with the physical interpretation of this nonlinear optical phenomenon as given by the three-step model, relating the maximal radial extent of the electron as predicted by the model to the radial extent of the Gaussian basis sets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]