Density fitting and Cholesky decomposition approximations in symmetry-adapted perturbation theory: Implementation and application to probe the nature of π-π interactions in linear acenes

Abstract

Density fitting (DF) approximations have been used to increase the efficiency of several quantum mechanical methods. In this work, we apply DF and a related approach, Cholesky decomposition (CD), to wave function-based symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT). We also test the one-center approximation to the Cholesky decomposition. The DF and CD approximations lead to a dramatic improvement in the overall computational cost of SAPT, while introducing negligible errors. For typical target accuracies, the Cholesky basis needed is noticeably smaller than the DF basis (although the cost of constructing the Cholesky vectors is slightly greater than that of constructing the three-index DF integrals). The SAPT program developed in this work is applied to the interactions between acenes previously studied by Grimme [Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 47, 3430 (2008)], expanding the cases studied by adding the pentacene dimer. The SAPT decomposition of the acene interactions provides a more realistic picture of the interactions than that from the energy decomposition analysis previously reported. The data suggest that parallel-displaced and T-shaped acene dimers both feature a special stabilizing π-π interaction arising from electron correlation terms which are significantly more stabilizing than expected on the basis of pairwise −C6R−6 estimates. These terms are qualitatively the same in T-shaped as in parallel-displaced geometries, although they are roughly a factor of 2 smaller in T-shaped geometries because of the larger distances between the intermolecular pairs of electrons.