Molecular orbital methods Moller-Plesset theory

The question for a more systematic inclusion of electronic correlation brings us back to the realm of molecular quantum chemistry [51,182]. Recall that (see Section 2.11.3) the exact solution (configuration interaction. Cl) is found on the basis of the self-consistent Hartree-Fock wave function, namely by the excitation of the electrons into the virtual, unoccupied molecular orbitals. Unfortunately, the ultimate goal oi full Cl is obtainable for very small systems only, and restricted Cl is size-inconsistent the amount of electron correlation depends on the size of the system (Section 2.11.3). Thus, size-consistent but perturbative approaches (Moller-Plesset theory) are often used, and the simplest practical procedure (of second order, thus dubbed MP2 [129]) already scales with the fifth order of the system s size N, in contrast to Hartree-Fock theory ( N ). The accuracy of these methods may be systematically improved by going up to higher orders but this makes the calculations even more expensive and slow (MP3 N, MP4 N ). Fortunately, restricted Cl can be mathematically rephrased in the form of the so-called coupled clus-... 

Various theoretical methods and approaches have been used to model properties and reactivities of metalloporphyrins. They range from the early use of qualitative molecular orbital diagrams (24,25), linear combination of atomic orbitals to yield molecular orbitals (LCAO-MO) calculations (26-30), molecular mechanics (31,32) and semi-empirical methods (33-35), and self-consistent field method (SCF) calculations (36-43) to the methods commonly used nowadays (molecular dynamic simulations (31,44,45), density functional theory (DFT) (35,46-49), Moller-Plesset perturbation theory ( ) (50-53), configuration interaction (Cl) (35,42,54-56), coupled cluster (CC) (57,58), and CASSCF/CASPT2 (59-63)). 

Second-order Moller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) is the computationally least expensive and most popular ab initio electron correlation method [4,15]. Except for transition metal compounds, MP2 equilibrium geometries are of comparable accuracy to DFT. However, MP2 captures long-range correlation effects (like dispersion) which are lacking in present-day density functionals. The computational cost of MP2 calculations is dominated by the integral transformation from the atomic orbital (AO) to the molecular orbital (MO) basis which scales as 0(N5) with the system size. This four-index transformation can be avoided by introduction of the RI integral approximation which requires just the transformation of three-index quantities and reduces the prefactor without significant loss in accuracy [36,37]. This makes RI-MP2 the most efficient alternative for small- to medium-sized molecular systems for which DFT fails. 

M0ller and Plesset proposed an alternative way to tackle the problem of electron correlation [Moller and Plesset 1934] Their method is based upon Rayleigh-Schrodinger perturbation theory, in which the true Hamiltonian operator X is expressed as the sum of a zeroth-order Hamiltonian Xq (for which a set of molecular orbitals can be obtained) and a perturbation, f " ... 

Two relevant topics have been ignored completely in this short chapter the treatment of electron correlation with more sophisticated methods than DFT (that remains unsatisfactory from many points of view) and the related subject of excited states. Wave function-based methods for the calculation of electron correlation, like the perturbative Moller-Plesset (MP) expansion or the coupled cluster approximation, have registered an impressive advancement in the molecular context. The computational cost increases with the molecular size (as the fifth power in the most favorable cases), especially for molecules with low symmetry. That increase was the main disadvantage of these electron correlation methods, and it limited their application to tiny molecules. This scaling problem has been improved dramatically by modern reformulation of the theory by localized molecular orbitals, and now a much more favorable scaling is possible with the appropriate approximations. Linear scaling with such low prefactors has been achieved with MP schemes that the... 

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