Choosing a density functional for static molecular polarizabilities

Abstract

Coupled-cluster calculations of static electronic dipole polarizabilities for 145 organic molecules are performed to create a reference data set. The molecules are composed from carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sulfur, chlorine, and bromine atoms. They range in size from triatomics to 14 atoms. The Hartree–Fock and 2nd-order Møller–Plesset methods and 34 density functionals, including local functionals, global hybrid functionals, and range-separated functionals of the long-range-corrected and screened-exchange varieties, are tested against this data set. On the basis of the test results, detailed recommendations are made for selecting density functionals for polarizability computations on relatively small organic molecules.