Advances in Molecular Quantum Chemistry Contained in the Q-Chem 4 Program Package

A summary of the technical advances that are incorporated in the fourth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program is provided, covering approximately the last seven years. These include developments in density functional theory methods and algorithms, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) property evaluation, coupled cluster and perturbation theories, methods for electronically excited and open-shell species, tools for treating extended environments, algorithms for walking on potential surfaces, analysis tools, energy and electron transfer modelling, parallel computing capabilities, and graphical user interfaces. In addition, a selection of example case studies that illustrate these capabilities is given. These include extensive benchmarks of the comparative accuracy of modern density functionals for bonded and non-bonded interactions, tests of attenuated second order Møller–Plesset (MP2) methods for intermolecular interactions, a variety of parallel performance benchmarks, and tests of the accuracy of implicit solvation models. Some specific chemical examples include calculations on the strongly correlated Cr2 dimer, exploring zeolite-catalysed ethane dehydrogenation, energy decomposition analysis of a charged ter-molecular complex arising from glycerol photoionisation, and natural transition orbitals for a Frenkel exciton state in a nine-unit model of a self-assembling nanotube

Scaled Opposite Spin Second Order Moller-Plesset Correlation Energy: An Economical Electronic Structure Method

A simplified approach to treating the electron correlation energy is suggested in which only the alpha-beta component of the second order Moller-Plesset energy is evaluated, and then scaled by an empirical factor which is suggested to be 1.3. This scaled opposite spin second order energy (SOS-MP@) yields results for relative energies and derivative properties that are statistically improved over the conventional MP2 method. Furthermore, the SOS-MP2 energy can be evaluated without the 5th order computational steps associated with MP2 theory, even without exploiting any spatial locality. A 4th order algorithm is given for evaluating the opposite spin MP2 energy using auxiliary basis expansions, and a Laplace aproach, and timing comparisons are given

Orbital-optimized opposite-spin scaled second order correlation: An economical method to improve the description of open-shell molecules

Coupled cluster methods based on Brueckner orbitals are well-known to resolve the problems of symmetry-breaking and spin-contamination that are often associated with Hartree-Fock orbitals. However their computational cost is large enough to prevent application to large molecules. Here they present a simple approximation where the orbitals are optimized with the mean-field energy plus a correlation energy taken as the opposite-spin component of the second order many-body correlation energy, scaled by an empirically chosen parameter (recommended as 1.2 for general applications). This optimized 2nd order opposite spin (abbreviated as O2) method requires fourth order computation on each orbital iteration. O2 is shown to yield predictions of structure and frequencies for closed shell molecules that are very similar to scaled second order Moller-Plesset methods. However it yields substantial improvements for open shell molecules, where problems with spin-contamination and symmetry breaking are shown to be greatly reduced

Advances in methods and algorithms in a modern quantum chemistry program package

Advances in theory and algorithms for electronic structure calculations must be incorporated into program packages to enable them to become routinely used by the broader chemical community. This work reviews advances made over the past five years or so that constitute the major improvements contained in a new release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry package, together with illustrative timings and applications. Specific developments discussed include fast methods for density functional theory calculations, linear scaling evaluation of energies, NMR chemical shifts and electric properties, fast auxiliary basis function methods for correlated energies and gradients, equation-of-motion coupled cluster methods for ground and excited states, geminal wavefunctions, embedding methods and techniques for exploring potential energy surfaces