Calculation of vibrational frequencies through a variational reduced-coupling approach

Abstract

In this study, we present a new method to perform accurate and efficient vibrational configuration interaction computations for large molecular systems. We use the vibrational self-consistent field (VSCF) method to compute an initial description of the vibrational wave function of the system, combined with the single-to-all approach to compute a sparse potential energy surface at the chosen ab initio level of theory. A Davidson scheme is then used to diagonalize the Hamiltonian matrix built on the VSCF virtual basis. Our method is applied to the computation of the OH-stretch frequency of formic acid and benzoic acid to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of this new technique.