Correlations in extended systems: A microscopic multilocal method for describing both local and global properties

Abstract

We review the basic principles of the various coupled cluster (CC) methods based on an exponential form for the many-body wavefunction, and contrast them with the configuration–interaction (CI) method. Particular emphasis is placed on their applicability to problems in quantum chemistry. We prove that in all cases we can construct an energy functional which variationally determines both the ground–state wavefunction and the dynamic equations of motion for nonstationary states. As a result the equations of motion assume the familiar classical canonical Hamiltonian form in some well-defined (multibody) configuration space. We also thereby construct the expectation-value functional for an arbitrary operator in such a way that the Feynman–Hellmann theorem is preserved at all natural levels of truncation of the appropriate configuration space. We show in detail that only in the case of the recently introduced extended CC method (ECCM) is the expectation-value functional expressed fully in terms of linked (multilocal) amplitudes. The ECCM is thereby capable of describing such global phenomena as shape transitions and other stereochemical properties, and the large-scale behavior of the molecular energy surfaces. We illustrate our methodology on the one-body density matrix, which is now much more easily discussed than by conventional methods in quantum chemistry.