Basis sets energy-independent

From the last column of the table, we see that the ratio of the parallel-spin to the total correlation energy is remarkably independent of the size of the basis set. Contrary to expectation, the parallel-spin correlation contribution appears to be about as difficult to account for within a finite basis-set approach as the antiparallel-spin correlation. Our investigation does not provide a careful study of the basis-set saturation behavior in MP2 calculations, such as is given in Refs. [74,72,75,33]. However, our results show that, with small- and moderate-sized basis sets which are sufficiently flexible for most purposes and computationally tractable in calculations on larger systems, there is no evidence that the parallel-spin correlation contribution converges more rapidly than the antiparallel-spin contribution. A plausible explanation for this effect is that, for small interelectronic separations, the wavefunction becomes a function of the separation, which is difficult to represent in a finite basis-set approach for either spin channel. The cusp condition of Eq. (19) is a noticeable manifestation of this dependence, but does not imply that the antiparallel-spin channel is more difficult to describe with a moderate-sized basis set than the parallel channel. In fact, in the parallel correlation hole, there is a higher-order cusp condition, relating the second and third derivatives with respect to u [76]. 

The occupation number vectors are basis vectors in an abstract linear vector space and specify thus only the occupation of the spin orbitals. The occupation number vectors contain no reference to the basis set. The reference to the basis set is built into the operators in the second quantization formalism. Observables are described by expectation values of operators and must be independent of the representation given to the operators and states. The matrix elements of a first quantization operator between two Slater determinants must therefore equal its counterpart of the second quantization formulation. For a given basis set the operators in the Fock space can thus be determined by requiring that the matrix elements between two occupation number vectors of the second quantization operator, must equal the matrix elements between the corresponding two Slater determinants of the corresponding first quantization operators. Operators that are considered in first quantization like the kinetic energy and the coulomb repulsion conserve the number of electrons. In the Fock space these operators must be represented as linear combinations of multipla of the ajaj... 

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