Effect of molecular-orbital rotations on ground-state energies in the parametric two-electron reduced density matrix method

Abstract

Different sets of molecular orbitals and the rotations connecting them are of great significance in molecular electronic structure. Most electron correlation methods depend on a reference wave function that separates the orbitals into occupied and unoccupied spaces. Energies and properties from these methods depend upon rotations between the spaces. Some electronic structure methods, such as modified coupled electron pair approximations and the recently developed parametric two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) methods [D. A. Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 253002 (2008)], also depend upon rotations between occupied orbitals and rotations between unoccupied orbitals. In this paper, we explore the sensitivity of the ground-state energies from the parametric 2-RDM method to rotations within the occupied space and within the unoccupied space. We discuss the theoretical origin of the rotational dependence and provide computational examples at both equilibrium and non-equilibrium geometries. We also study the effect of these rotations on the size extensivity of the parametric 2-RDM method. Computations show that the orbital rotations have a small effect upon the parametric 2-RDM energies in comparison to the energy differences observed between methodologies such as coupled cluster and parametric 2-RDM. Furthermore, while the 2-RDM method is rigorously size extensive in a local molecular orbital basis set, calculations reveal negligible deviations in nonlocal molecular orbital basis sets such as those from canonical Hartree-Fock calculations.