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We present an analysis of the dispersion interaction energy and forces in density-functional theory from the point of view of the adiabatic connection between the Kohn–Sham non-interacting and fully interacting systems. Accurate coupled-cluster singles-doubles-perturbative-triples [CCSD(T)] densities are computed for the helium dimer and used to construct the exchange-correlation potential of Kohn–Sham theory, showing agreement with earlier results presented for the Hartree–Fock–Kohn–Sham method [M. Allen and D. J. Tozer, J. Chem. Phys. 117, 11113 (2002)]. The accuracy of the methodology utilized to determine these solutions is checked by calculation of the Hellmann–-Feynman forces based on the Kohn–-Sham densities, which are compared with analytic CCSD(T) forces. To ensure that this comparison is valid in a finite atomic-orbital basis set, we employ floating Gaussian basis functions throughout and all results are counterpoise corrected. The subtle charge-rearrangement effects associated with the dispersion interaction are highlighted as the origin of a large part of the dispersion force. To recover the exchange-correlation components of the interaction energy, adiabatic connections are constructed for the supermolecular system and for its constituent atoms; subtraction of the resulting adiabatic-connection curves followed by integration over the interaction strength recovers the exchange-correlation contribution relevant to the density-functional description of the dispersion interaction. The results emphasize the long-ranged, dynamically correlated nature of the dispersion interaction between closed-shell species. An alternative adiabatic-connection path is also explored, where the electronic interactions are introduced in a manner that emphasizes the range of the electronic interactions, highlighting their purely long-ranged nature, consistent with the success of range-separated hybrid approaches in this context.

Using a recently implemented technique for the calculation of the adiabatic connection (AC) of density functional theory (DFT) based on Lieb maximization with respect to the external potential, the AC is studied for atoms and molecules containing up to ten electrons: the helium isoelectronic series, the hydrogen molecule, the beryllium isoelectronic series, the neon atom, and the water molecule. The calculation of AC curves by Lieb maximization at various levels of electronic-structure theory is discussed. For each system, the AC curve is calculated using Hartree–Fock (HF) theory, second-order Møller–Plesset (MP2) theory, coupled-cluster singles-and-doubles (CCSD) theory, and coupled-cluster singles-doubles-perturbative-triples [CCSD(T)] theory, expanding the molecular orbitals and the effective external potential in large Gaussian basis sets. The HF AC curve includes a small correlation-energy contribution in the context of DFT, arising from orbital relaxation as the electron-electron interaction is switched on under the constraint that the wave function is always a single determinant. The MP2 and CCSD AC curves recover the bulk of the dynamical correlation energy and their shapes can be understood in terms of a simple energy model constructed from a consideration of the doubles-energy expression at different interaction strengths. Differentiation of this energy expression with respect to the interaction strength leads to a simple two-parameter doubles model (AC-D) for the AC integrand (and hence the correlation energy of DFT) as a function of the interaction strength. The structure of the triples-energy contribution is considered in a similar fashion, leading to a quadratic model for the triples correction to the AC curve (AC-T). From a consideration of the structure of a two-level configuration-interaction (CI) energy expression of the hydrogen molecule, a simple two-parameter CI model (AC-CI) is proposed to account for the effects of static correlation on the AC. When parametrized in terms of the same input data, the AC-CI model offers improved performance over the corresponding AC-D model, which is shown to be the lowest-order contribution to the AC-CI model. The utility of the accurately calculated AC curves for the analysis of standard density functionals is demonstrated for the BLYP exchange-correlation functional and the interaction-strength-interpolation (ISI) model AC integrand. From the results of this analysis, we investigate the performance of our proposed two-parameter AC-D and AC-CI models when a simple density functional for the AC at infinite interaction strength is employed in place of information at the fully interacting point. The resulting two-parameter correlation functionals offer a qualitatively correct behavior of the AC integrand with much improved accuracy over previous attempts. The AC integrands in the present work are recommended as a basis for further work, generating functionals that avoid spurious error cancellations between exchange and correlation energies and give good accuracy for the range of densities and types of correlation contained in the systems studied here.

We present a second-quantization based atomic-orbital method for the computation of time-dependent response functions within Hartree-Fock and Kohn-Sham density-functional theories. The method is suited for linear scaling. Illustrative results are presented for excitation energies, one- and two-photon transition moments, polarizabilities, and hyperpolarizabilities for hexagonal BN sheets with up to 180 atoms.

Erratum: “Density-functional and electron correlated study of five linear birefringences—Kerr, Cotton–Mouton, Buckingham, Jones and magnetoelectric—in gaseous benzene” †J. Chem. Phys. 121, 8814 „2004…‡; “Density-functional study of electric and magnetic properties of hexafluorobenzene in the vapor phase” †J. Chem. Phys. 122, 234314 „2005…‡; and “A computational study of some electric and magnetic properties of gaseous BF3 and BCl3” †J. Chem. Phys. 123, 114307 „2005…‡

A linear-scaling implementation of Hartree-Fock and Kohn-Sham self-consistent field theories for the calculation of frequency-dependent molecular response properties and excitation energies is presented, based on a nonredundant exponential parametrization of the one-electron density matrix in the atomic-orbital basis, avoiding the use of canonical orbitals. The response equations are solved iteratively, by an atomic-orbital subspace method equivalent to that of molecular-orbital theory. Important features of the subspace method are the use of paired trial vectors (to preserve the algebraic structure of the response equations), a nondiagonal preconditioner (for rapid convergence), and the generation of good initial guesses (for robust solution). As a result, the performance of the iterative method is the same as in canonical molecular-orbital theory, with five to ten iterations needed for convergence. As in traditional direct Hartree-Fock and Kohn-Sham theories, the calculations are dominated by the construction of the effective Fock/Kohn-Sham matrix, once in each iteration. Linear complexity is achieved by using sparse-matrix algebra, as illustrated in calculations of excitation energies and frequency-dependent polarizabilities of polyalanine peptides containing up to 1400 atoms.

The relationship between the random-phase-approximation (RPA) correlation energy and the continuous algebraic Riccati equation is examined and the importance of a stabilizing solution is emphasized. The criterion to distinguish this from non-stabilizing solutions can be used to ensure that physical, smooth potential energy surfaces are obtained. An implementation of analytic RPA molecular gradients is presented using the Lagrangian technique. Illustrative calculations indicate that RPA with Hartree-Fock reference orbitals delivers an accuracy similar to that of second-order Mo̸ller-Plesset perturbation theory.

We outline a method for the calculation of nonlinear properties such as dynamic hyperpolarizabilities for self‐consistent‐field (SCF) wave functions. In this method, two‐electron integrals are only addressed in the evaluation of Fock matrices and Fock matrices with one‐index transformed integrals. These matrices are determined directly in terms of integrals evaluated in the atomic orbital basis, avoiding expensive integral transformations between atomic and molecular orbital bases as well as storing and retrieving the two‐electron integrals. The method is double direct—direct in the sense of constructing Fock matrices from atomic integrals, and direct in the sense of solving the response equations iteratively using direct linear transformations of a generating matrix times trial vectors. Applications can be performed on species of the same size as in direct SCF. The cost of evaluating a single nonlinear molecular property is comparable to that of optimizing the wave function. Additional properties can be obtained at little extra cost by solving all response equations simultaneously. As a demonstration, we calculate the static and dynamic hyperpolarizabilities of para‐nitroaniline.

A fully automated parallelized implementation of the incremental scheme for coupled-cluster singles-and-doubles (CCSD) energies has been extended to treat molecular (unrelaxed) first-order one-electron properties such as the electric dipole and quadrupole moments. The convergence and accuracy of the incremental approach for the dipole and quadrupole moments have been studied for a variety of chemically interesting systems. It is found that the electric dipole moment can be obtained to within 5% and 0.5% accuracy with respect to the exact CCSD value at the third and fourth orders of the expansion, respectively. Furthermore, we find that the incremental expansion of the quadrupole moment converges to the exact result with increasing order of the expansion: the convergence of nonaromatic compounds is fast with errors less than 16 mau and less than 1 mau at third and fourth orders, respectively (1 mau=10(-3)ea(0)(2)); the aromatic compounds converge slowly with maximum absolute deviations of 174 and 72 mau at third and fourth orders, respectively.

Recently, we have implemented a scheme for the calculation of the adiabatic connection linking the Kohn–Sham system to the physical, interacting system. This scheme uses a generalized Lieb functional, in which the electronic interaction strength is varied in a simple linear fashion, keeping the potential or the density fixed in the process. In the present work, we generalize this scheme further to accommodate arbitrary two-electron operators, allowing the calculation of adiabatic connections following alternative paths as outlined by Yang [J. Chem. Phys. 109, 10107 (1998)] . Specifically, we examine the error-function and Gaussian-attenuated error-function adiabatic connections. It is shown that while the error-function connection displays some promising features, making it amenable to the possible development of new exchange-correlation functionals by modeling the adiabatic connection integrand, the Gaussian-attenuated error-function connection is less promising. We explore the high-density and strong static correlation regimes for two-electron systems. Implications of this work for the utility of range-separated schemes are discussed.

Ab initio calculations have been performed for the static and dynamic polarizability and hyperpolarizability for a series of polyynes C2nH2 using self‐consistent field (SCF) (n=1–6) and multiconfiguration self‐consistent field (MCSCF) (n=1–4) wave functions. We have considered the longitudinal component of the static hyperpolarizability and the same component of the dynamic hyperpolarizability measured in electric‐field induced second harmonic generation γESHG=γ(−2ω;ω,ω,0). The frequency dependence of the polarizability and hyperpolarizability has been rationalized in terms of the coefficients in expansions in ω2. The static hyperpolarizabilities vary smoothly with the chain length and satisfy γ(C2nH2)=γ (C2H2)×nX, where X≊3.0. The dynamic hyperpolarizability satisfies a similar relation where X increases slowly with ω.

We describe an efficient parallel implementation of response theory for calculations of molecular properties, and demonstrate its performance by calculations on a series of polyacene molecules, fro ...

The Lieb formulation of density-functional theory is briefly reviewed and its straightforward generalization to arbitrary electron-electron interaction strengths discussed, leading to the introduction of density-fixed and potential-fixed adiabatic connections. An iterative scheme for the calculation of the Lieb functionals under the appropriate constraints is outlined following the direct optimization approach of Wu and Yang [J. Chem. Phys. 118, 2498 (2003)]. First- and second-order optimization schemes for the calculation of accurate adiabatic-connection integrands are investigated and compared; the latter is preferred both in terms of computational efficiency and accuracy. The scheme is applicable to systems of any number of electrons. However, to determine the accuracy that may be achieved, the present work focuses on two-electron systems for which a number of simplifications may be exploited. The procedure is applied to the helium isoelectronic series and the H(2) molecule. The resulting adiabatic-connection curves yield the full configuration-interaction exchange-correlation energies extrapolated to the basis-set limit. The relationship between the Kohn-Sham and natural orbitals as functions of the electron-electron interaction strength is explored in detail for H(2). The accuracy with which the exchange-correlation contributions to the modified local potential can be determined is discussed. The new accurate adiabatic-connection curves are then compared with some recently investigated approximate forms calculated using accurate full configuration-interaction input data. This study demonstrates that the adiabatic-connection integrand may be determined accurately and efficiently, providing important insights into the link between the Kohn-Sham and traditional quantum-chemical treatments of the exchange-correlation problem in electronic-structure theory.