Comment on a spurious prediction of a non-planar geometry for benzene at the MP2 level of theory

Abstract

MP2 calculations with the full aug-cc-pVTZ basis set give a non-planar structure for benzene. Although this non-physical result can be avoided by using the smaller aug-cc-pVDZ basis set or by scaling or deleting selected functions from the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set, such changes to the basis set can result in calculated values of the frequencies of the b2g out-of-plane vibrations that are considerably underestimated. The origin of this behavior is traced to linear dependency problems with the aug-cc-pVDZ and aug-cc-pVTZ basis sets when used for benzene.