arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Linus Bjarne Dittmer.
Over the past decade, the Python-based Simulations of Chemistry Framework (PySCF) has developed into a widely used open-source platform for electronic structure theory and quantum chemical method development. This article reviews the major advances since the previous overview in 2020, covering new modules and methodology, infrastructure changes, and performance benchmarks.
Diffuse atomic orbital basis sets have proven to be essential to obtain accurate interaction energies, especially in regard to non-covalent interactions. However, they also have a detrimental impact on the sparsity of the one-particle density matrix (1-PDM), to a degree stronger than the spatial extent of the basis functions alone could explain. This is despite the fact that the matrix elements of the 1-PDM of insulators (systems with significant HOMO-LUMO gaps) are expected to decay exponentially with increasing real-space distance from the diagonal and the asymptotic decay rate is expected to have a well-defined basis set limit. The observed low sparsity of the 1-PDM appears to be independent of representation and even persists after projecting the 1-PDM onto a real-space grid, leading to the conclusion that this "curse of sparsity" is solely a basis set artifact, which, counterintuitively, becomes worse for larger basis sets, seemingly contradicting the notion of a well-defined basis set limit. We show that this is a consequence of the low locality of the contra-variant basis functions as quantified by the inverse overlap matrix $\mathbf{S}^{-1}$ being significantly less sparse than its covariant dual. Introducing the model system of an infinite non-interacting chain of helium atoms, we are able to quantify the exponential decay rate to be proportional to the diffuseness as well as local incompleteness of the basis set, meaning small and diffuse basis sets are affected the most. Finally, we propose one solution to the conundrum in the form of the complementary auxiliary basis set (CABS) singles correction in combination with compact, low l-quantum-number basis sets, showing promising results for non-covalent interactions.