arXiv subjects

Anthony Scemama

Publications and source records attributed to Anthony Scemama.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

The performance of CIPSI on the ground state electronic energy of benzene

Following the recent work of Eriksen et al. [arXiv:2008.02678], we report the performance of the \textit{Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection made Iteratively} (CIPSI) method on the non-relativistic frozen-core correlation energy of the benzene molecule in the cc-pVDZ basis. Following our usual protocol, we obtain a correlation energy of $-863.4$ m$E_h$ which agrees with the theoretical estimate of $-863$ m$E_h$ proposed by Eriksen et al. using an extensive array of highly-accurate new electronic structure methods.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

Taming the fixed-node error in diffusion Monte Carlo via range separation

By combining density-functional theory (DFT) and wave function theory (WFT) via the range separation (RS) of the interelectronic Coulomb operator, we obtain accurate fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo (FN-DMC) energies with compact multi-determinant trial wave functions. In particular, we combine here short-range exchange-correlation functionals with a flavor of selected configuration interaction (SCI) known as \emph{configuration interaction using a perturbative selection made iteratively} (CIPSI), a scheme that we label RS-DFT-CIPSI. One of the take-home messages of the present study is that RS-DFT-CIPSI trial wave functions yield lower fixed-node energies with more compact multi-determinant expansions than CIPSI, especially for small basis sets. Indeed, as the CIPSI component of RS-DFT-CIPSI is relieved from describing the short-range part of the correlation hole around the electron-electron coalescence points, the number of determinants in the trial wave function required to reach a given accuracy is significantly reduced as compared to a conventional CIPSI calculation. Importantly, by performing various numerical experiments, we evidence that the RS-DFT scheme essentially plays the role of a simple Jastrow factor by mimicking short-range correlation effects, hence avoiding the burden of performing a stochastic optimization. Considering the 55 atomization energies of the Gaussian-1 benchmark set of molecules, we show that using a fixed value of $μ=0.5$~bohr$^{-1}$ provides effective error cancellations as well as compact trial wave functions, making the present method a good candidate for the accurate description of large chemical systems.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

A basis-set error correction based on density-functional theory for strongly correlated molecular systems

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.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

Pros and Cons of the Bethe-Salpeter Formalism for Ground-State Energies

The combination of the many-body Green's function $GW$ approximation and the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) formalism has shown to be a promising alternative to time-dependent density-functional theory (TD-DFT) for computing vertical transition energies and oscillator strengths in molecular systems. The BSE formalism can also be employed to compute ground-state correlation energies thanks to the adiabatic-connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem (ACFDT). Here, we study the topology of the ground-state potential energy surfaces (PES) of several diatomic molecules near their equilibrium bond length. Thanks to comparisons with state-of-art computational approaches (CC3), we show that ACFDT@BSE is surprisingly accurate, and can even compete with lower-order coupled cluster methods (CC2 and CCSD) in terms of total energies and equilibrium bond distances for the considered systems. However, we sometimes observe unphysical irregularities on the ground-state PES in relation with difficulties in the identification of a few $GW$ quasiparticle energies.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

A Mountaineering Strategy to Excited States: Highly-Accurate Energies and Benchmarks for Exotic Molecules and Radicals

Aiming at completing the sets of FCI-quality transition energies that we recently developed (\textit{J.~Chem.~Theory Comput.} \textbf{14} (2018) 4360--4379, \textit{ibid.}~\textbf{15} (2019) 1939--1956, and \textit{ibid.}~\textbf{16} (2020) 1711--1741), we provide, in the present contribution, ultra-accurate vertical excitation energies for a series of "exotic" closed-shell molecules containing F, Cl, P, and Si atoms and small radicals, such as CON and its variants, that were not considered to date in such investigations. This represents a total of 81 high-quality transitions obtained with a series of diffuse-containing basis sets of various sizes. For the exotic compounds, these transitions are used to perform benchmarks with a vast array of lower-level models, $\textit{i.e.}$ CIS(D), EOM-MP2, (SOS/SCS)-CC2, STEOM-CCSD, CCSD, CCSDR(3), CCSDT-3, (SOS-)ADC(2), and ADC(3). Additional comparisons are made with literature data. For the open-shell compounds, we have compared the performances of both the unrestricted and restricted open-shell CCSD and CC3 formalisms.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

Variational principles in quantum Monte Carlo: the troubled story of variance minimization

We investigate the use of different variational principles in quantum Monte Carlo, namely energy and variance minimization, prompted by the interest in the robust and accurate estimate of electronic excited states. For two prototypical, challenging molecules, we readily reach the accuracy of the best available reference excitation energies using energy minimization in a state-specific or state-average fashion for states of different or equal symmetry, respectively. On the other hand, in variance minimization, where the use of suitable functionals is expected to target specific states regardless of the symmetry, we encounter severe problems for a variety of wave functions: as the variance converges, the energy drifts away from that of the selected state. This unexpected behavior is sometimes observed even when the target is the ground state, and generally prevents the robust estimate of total and excitation energies. We analyze this problem using a very simple wave function and infer that the optimization finds little or no barrier to escape from a local minimum or local plateau, eventually converging to the unique lowest-variance state instead of the target state. While the loss of the state of interest can be delayed and possibly avoided by reducing the statistical error of the gradient, for the full optimization of realistic wave functions, variance minimization with current functionals appears to be an impractical route.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

A Mountaineering Strategy to Excited States: Highly-Accurate Energies and Benchmarks for Medium Size Molecules

Following our previous work focussing on compounds containing up to 3 non-hydrogen atoms [\emph{J. Chem. Theory Comput.} {\bfseries 14} (2018) 4360--4379], we present here highly-accurate vertical transition energies obtained for 27 molecules encompassing 4, 5, and 6 non-hydrogen atoms. To obtain these energies, we use equation-of-motion coupled cluster theory up to the highest technically possible excitation order for these systems (CC3, EOM-CCSDT, and EOM-CCSDTQ), selected configuration interaction (SCI) calculations (with tens of millions of determinants in the reference space), as well as the multiconfigurational $n$-electron valence state perturbation theory (NEVPT2) method. All these approaches are applied in combination with diffuse-containing atomic basis sets. For all transitions, we report at least CC3/\emph{aug}-cc-pVQZ vertical excitation energies as well as CC3/\emph{aug}-cc-pVTZ oscillator strengths for each dipole-allowed transition. We show that CC3 almost systematically delivers transition energies in agreement with higher-level methods with a typical deviation of $\pm 0.04$ eV, except for transitions with a dominant double excitation character where the error is much larger. The present contribution gathers a large, diverse and accurate set of more than 200 highly-accurate transition energies for states of various natures (valence, Rydberg, singlet, triplet, $n \rightarrow π^*$, $π\rightarrow π^*$, \ldots). We use this series of theoretical best estimates to benchmark a series of popular methods for excited state calculations: CIS(D), ADC(2), CC2, STEOM-CCSD, EOM-CCSD, CCSDR(3), CCSDT-3, CC3, as well as NEVPT2. The results of these benchmarks are compared to the available literature data.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

The Quest For Highly Accurate Excitation Energies: A Computational Perspective

We provide an overview of the successive steps that made possible to obtain increasingly accurate excitation energies with computational chemistry tools, eventually leading to chemically accurate vertical transition energies for small- and medium-size molecules. First, we describe the evolution of \textit{ab initio} methods employed to define benchmark values, with originally Roos' CASPT2 method, then the CC3 method as in the renowned Thiel set, and more recently the resurgence of selected configuration interaction methods. The latter method has been able to deliver consistently, for both single and double excitations, highly accurate excitation energies for small molecules, as well as medium-size molecules with compact basis sets. Second, we describe how these high-level methods and the creation of representative benchmark sets of excitation energies have allowed to assess fairly and accurately the performance of computationally lighter methods. We conclude by discussing the future theoretical and technological developments in the field.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

A Density-Based Basis-Set Incompleteness Correction for GW Methods

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.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2019

Chemically Accurate Excitation Energies With Small Basis Sets

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-$ζ$ 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.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2019

Quantum Package 2.0: An Open-Source Determinant-Driven Suite of Programs

\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.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2019

Excited states with selected CI-QMC: chemically accurate excitation energies and geometries

We employ quantum Monte Carlo to obtain chemically accurate vertical and adiabatic excitation energies, and equilibrium excited-state structures for the small, yet challenging, formaldehyde and thioformaldehyde molecules. A key ingredient is a robust protocol to obtain balanced ground- and excited-state Jastrow-Slater wave functions at a given geometry, and to maintain such a balanced description as we relax the structure in the excited state. We use determinantal components generated via a selected configuration interaction scheme which targets the same second-order perturbation energy correction for all states of interest at different geometries, and we fully optimize all variational parameters in the resultant Jastrow-Slater wave functions. Importantly, the excitation energies as well as the structural parameters in the ground and excited states are converged with very compact wave functions comprising few thousand determinants in a minimally augmented double-$ζ$ basis set. These results are obtained already at the variational Monte Carlo level, the more accurate diffusion Monte Carlo method yielding only a small improvement in the adiabatic excitation energies. We find that matching Jastrow-Slater wave functions with similar variances can yield excitations compatible with our best estimates; however, the variance-matching procedure requires somewhat larger determinantal expansions to achieve the same accuracy, and it is less straightforward to adapt during structural optimization in the excited state.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2019

A Density-Based Basis-Set Correction For Wave Function Theory

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} $μ$, the key ingredient here is a range-separation \textit{function} $μ(\bf{r})$ 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.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2019

Influence of Pseudopotentials on Excitation Energies From Selected Configuration Interaction and Diffusion Monte Carlo

Due to their diverse nature, the faithful description of excited states within electronic structure theory methods remains one of the grand challenges of modern theoretical chemistry. Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods have been applied very successfully to ground state properties but still remain generally less effective than other non-stochastic methods for electronically excited states. Nonetheless, we have recently reported accurate excitation energies for small organic molecules at the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo (FN-DMC) within a Jastrow-free QMC protocol relying on a deterministic and systematic construction of nodal surfaces using the selected configuration interaction (sCI) algorithm known as CIPSI (Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection made Iteratively). Albeit highly accurate, these all-electron calculations are computationally expensive due to the presence of core electrons. One very popular approach to remove these chemically-inert electrons from the QMC simulation is to introduce pseudopotentials (also known as effective core potentials). Taking the water molecule as an example, we investigate the influence of Burkatzki-Filippi-Dolg (BFD) pseudopotentials and their associated basis sets on vertical excitation energies obtained with sCI and FN-DMC methods. Although these pseudopotentials are known to be relatively safe for ground state properties, we evidence that special care may be required if one strives for highly accurate vertical transition energies. Indeed, comparing all-electron and valence-only calculations, we show that using pseudopotentials with the associated basis sets can induce differences of the order of 0.05 eV on the excitation energies. Fortunately, a reasonable estimate of this shift can be estimated at the sCI level.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2019

Self-Consistent Electron-Nucleus Cusp Correction for Molecular Orbitals

We describe a method for imposing the correct electron-nucleus (e-n) cusp in molecular orbitals expanded as a linear combination of (cuspless) Gaussian basis functions. Enforcing the e-n cusp in trial wave functions is an important asset in quantum Monte Carlo calculations as it significantly reduces the variance of the local energy during the Monte Carlo sampling. In the method presented here, the Gaussian basis set is augmented with a small number of Slater basis functions. Note that, unlike other e-n cusp correction schemes, the presence of the Slater function is not limited to the vicinity of the nuclei. Both the coefficients of these cuspless Gaussian and cusp-correcting Slater basis functions may be self-consistently optimized by diagonalization of an orbital-dependent effective Fock operator. Illustrative examples are reported for atoms (\ce{H}, \ce{He} and \ce{Ne}) as well as for a small molecular system (\ce{BeH2}). For the simple case of the \ce{He} atom, we observe that, with respect to the cuspless version, the variance is reduced by one order of magnitude by applying our cusp-corrected scheme.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2018

Reference Energies for Double Excitations

Excited states exhibiting double excitation character are notoriously difficult to model using conventional single-reference methods, such as adiabatic time-dependent density-functional theory (TD-DFT) or equation-of-motion coupled cluster (EOM-CC). In the present work, we provide accurate reference excitation energies for transitions involving a substantial amount of double excitation using a series of increasingly large diffuse-containing atomic basis sets. Our set gathers 20 vertical transitions from 14 small- and medium-size molecule. Depending on the size of the molecule, selected configuration interaction (sCI) and/or multiconfigurational calculations are performed in order to obtain reliable estimates of the vertical transition energies. In addition, coupled cluster approaches including at least contributions from iterative triples are assessed. Our results clearly evidence that the error in CC methods is intimately related to the amount of double excitation character of the transition. For "pure" double excitations (i.e. for transitions which do not mix with single excitations), the error in CC3 can easily reach 1 eV, while it goes down to few tenths of an eV for more common transitions (like in \emph{trans}-butadiene) involving a significant amount of singles. As expected, CC approaches including quadruples yield highly accurate results for any type of transitions. The quality of the excitation energies obtained with multiconfigurational methods is harder to predict. We have found that the overall accuracy of these methods is highly dependent of both the system and the selected active space. The inclusion of the $σ$ and $σ^*$ orbitals in the active space, even for transitions involving mostly $π$ and $π^*$ orbitals, is mandatory in order to reach high accuracy. A theoretical best estimate (TBE) is reported for each transition.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2018

Selected configuration interaction dressed by perturbation

Selected configuration interaction (sCI) methods including second-order perturbative corrections provide near full CI (FCI) quality energies with only a small fraction of the determinants of the FCI space. Here, we introduce both a state-specific and a multi-state sCI method based on the CIPSI (Configuration Interaction using a Perturbative Selection made Iteratively) algorithm. The present method revises the reference (internal) space under the effect of its interaction with the outer space via the construction of an effective Hamiltonian, following the shifted-Bk philosophy of Davidson and coworkers. In particular, the multi-state algorithm removes the storage bottleneck of the effective Hamiltonian via a low-rank factorization of the dressing matrix.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2018

A Mountaineering Strategy to Excited States: Highly-Accurate Reference Energies and Benchmarks

Striving to define very accurate vertical transition energies, we perform both high-level coupled cluster (CC) calculations (up to CCSDTQP) and selected configuration interaction (sCI) calculations (up to several millions of determinants) for 18 small compounds. By systematically increasing the order of the CC expansion, the number of determinants in the CI expansion as well as the size of the one-electron basis set, we have been able to reach near full CI (FCI) quality transition energies. These calculations are carried out on CC3/aug-cc-pVTZ geometries, using a series of increasingly large atomic basis sets systematically including diffuse functions. In this way, we define a list of 110 transition energies for states of various characters to be used as references for further calculations. Benchmark transition energies are provided at the aug-pVTZ level as well as with additional basis set corrections, in order to obtain results close to the complete basis set limit. These reference data are used to benchmark a series of twelve excited-state wave function methods accounting for double and triple contributions, namely ADC(2), ADC(3), CIS(D), CIS(D$_\infty$), CC2, STEOM-CCSD, CCSD, CCSDR(3), CCSDT-3, CC3, CCSDT and CCSDTQ. It turns out that CCSDTQ yields a negligible difference with the extrapolated CI values with a mean absolute error as small as $0.01$ eV, whereas the coupled cluster approaches including iterative triples are also very accurate (mean absolute error of $0.03$ eV). Consequently, CCSDT-3 and CC3 can be used to define reliable benchmarks. This observation does not hold for ADC(3) that delivers quite large errors for this set of small compounds, with a clear tendency to overcorrect its second-order version, ADC(2). Finally, we discuss the possibility to use basis set extrapolation approaches so as to tackle more easily larger compounds.

physics.chem-ph↗