Variational Two-electron Reduced Density Matrix Research Articles

Data-Driven Refinement of Electronic Energies from Two-Electron Reduced-Density-Matrix Theory.

The exponential computational cost of describing strongly correlated electrons can be mitigated by adopting a reduced-density matrix (RDM)-based description of the electronic structure. While variational two-electron RDM (v2RDM) methods can enable large-scale calculations on such systems, the quality of the solution is limited by the fact that only a subset of known necessary N-representability constraints can be applied to the 2RDM in practical calculations. Here, we demonstrate that violations of partial three-particle (T1 and T2) N-representability conditions, which can be evaluated with knowledge of only the 2RDM, can serve as physics-based features in a machine-learning (ML) protocol for improving energies from v2RDM calculations that consider only two-particle (PQG) conditions. Proof-of-principle calculations demonstrate that the model yields substantially improved energies relative to reference values from configuration-interaction-based calculations.

Challenges for Variational Reduced-Density-Matrix Theory: Total Angular Momentum Constraints.

The variational two-electron reduced density matrix (v2RDM) method is generalized for the description of total angular momentum (J) and projection of total angular momentum (MJ) states in atomic systems described by nonrelativistic Hamiltonians, and it is shown that the approach exhibits serious deficiencies. Under ensemble N-representability constraints, v2RDM theory fails to retain the appropriate degeneracies among various J states for fixed spin (S) and orbital angular momentum (L), and for fixed L, S, and J, the manifold of MJ states is not necessarily degenerate. Moreover, a substantial energy error is observed for a system for which the two-electron reduced density matrix is exactly ensemble N-representable; in this case, the error stems from violations in pure-state N-representability conditions. Unfortunately, such violations do not appear to be good indicators of the reliability of energies from v2RDM theory in general. Several states are identified for which energy errors are near zero and yet pure-state conditions are clearly violated.

Correlation-driven phenomena in periodic molecular systems from variational two-electron reduced density matrix theory.

Correlation-driven phenomena in molecular periodic systems are challenging to predict computationally not only because such systems are periodically infinite but also because they are typically strongly correlated. Here, we generalize the variational two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) theory to compute the energies and properties of strongly correlated periodic systems. The 2-RDM of the unit cell is directly computed subject to necessary N-representability conditions such that the unit-cell 2-RDM represents at least one N-electron density matrix. Two canonical but non-trivial systems, periodic metallic hydrogen chains and periodic acenes, are treated to demonstrate the methodology. We show that while single-reference correlation theories do not capture the strong (static) correlation effects in either of these molecular systems, the periodic variational 2-RDM theory predicts the Mott metal-to-insulator transition in the hydrogen chains and the length-dependent polyradical formation in acenes. For both hydrogen chains and acenes, the periodic calculations are compared with previous non-periodic calculations with the results showing a significant change in energies and increase in the electron correlation from the periodic boundary conditions. The 2-RDM theory, which allows for much larger active spaces than are traditionally possible, is applicable to studying correlation-driven phenomena in general periodic molecular solids and materials.

Prediction of the Existence of LiCH: A Carbene-like Organometallic Molecule.

Carbenes comprise a well-known class of organometallic compounds each consisting of a neutral, divalent carbon and two unshared electrons. Carbenes can have singlet or triplet ground states, each giving rise to a distinct reactivity. Methylene (CH2), the parent hydride, is well-known to be bent in its triplet ground state. Here, we predict the existence of LiCH, a carbene-like organometallic molecule. Computationally, we treat the electronic structure with parametric and variational two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) methods, which are capable of capturing multireference correlation typically associated with the singlet state of a diradical. Similar to methylene, LiCH is a triplet ground state with a predicted 15.8 kcal/mol singlet-triplet gap. However, unlike methylene, LiCH is linear in both the triplet state and the lowest excited singlet state. Furthermore, the singlet state is found to exhibit strong electron correlation as a diradical. In comparison to dissociation channels Li + CH and Li+ + CH-, the LiCH was found to be stable by approximately 77 kcal/mol.

Reduced Density Matrix-Driven Complete Active Apace Self-Consistent Field Corrected for Dynamic Correlation from the Adiabatic Connection.

The recently proposed multireference adiabatic connection (AC) formalism [Pernal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 013001 (2018)] is applied to recover dynamic electron correlation effects lacking in variational two-electron reduced density matrix (v2RDM)-driven complete active space self-consistent field theory (CASSCF). The AC approach is validated by computing potential energy curves for the dissociation of molecular nitrogen and the symmetric double dissociation of H2O while enforcing two sets of approximate N-representability conditions in the underlying v2RDM-driven CASSCF calculations (either two-particle or two-particle plus partial three-particle conditions). The AC yields smaller absolute errors than second-order N-electron perturbation theory (NEVPT2) at all molecular geometries for both sets of the N-representability conditions considered. The efficacy of the approach for thermochemistry is also assessed for a set of 31 small-molecule reactions. When imposing partial three-particle N-representability conditions, mean and maximum unsigned errors in reaction energies from the AC are superior to those from NEVPT2.

Entangled Electrons Drive a Non-superexchange Mechanism in a Cobalt Quinoid Dimer Complex

A central theme in chemistry is the understanding of the mechanisms that drive chemical transformations. A well-known, highly cited mechanism in organometallic chemistry is the superexchange mechanism in which unpaired electrons on two or more metal centers interact through an electron pair of the bridging ligand. We use a combination of novel synthesis and computation to show that such interactions may in fact occur by a more direct mechanism than superexchange that is based on direct quantum entanglement of the two metal centers. Specifically, we synthesize and experimentally characterize a novel cobalt dimer complex with benzoquinoid bridging ligands and investigate its electronic structure with the variational two-electron reduced density matrix method using large active spaces. The result draws novel connections between inorganic mechanisms and quantum entanglement, thereby opening new possibilities for the design of strongly correlated organometallic compounds whose magnetic and spin properties have applications in superconductors, energy storage, thermoelectrics, and spintronics.

Global Hybrid Multiconfiguration Pair-Density Functional Theory.

A global hybrid extension of multiconfiguration pair-density functional theory (MC-PDFT) is developed. Using a linear decomposition of the electron-electron repulsion term, a fraction λ of the nonlocal exchange interaction, obtained from variational two-electron reduced-density matrix (v2RDM)-driven complete active-space self-consistent field (CASSCF) theory, is combined with its local counterpart, obtained from an on-top pair-density functional. The resulting scheme (called λ-MC-PDFT) inherits the benefits of MC-PDFT (e.g., its simplicity and the resolution of the symmetry dilemma) and, when combined with the v2RDM approach to CASSCF, requires only polynomially scaling computational effort. As a result, λ-MC-PDFT can efficiently describe static and dynamical correlation effects in strongly correlated systems. The efficacy of the approach is assessed for several challenging multiconfigurational problems, including the dissociation of molecular nitrogen, the double dissociation of a water molecule, and the 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions of ozone to ethylene and ozone to acetylene in the O3ADD6 benchmark set.

Combining Pair-Density Functional Theory and Variational Two-Electron Reduced-Density Matrix Methods.

Complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) computations can be realized at polynomial cost via the variational optimization of the active-space two-electron reduced-density matrix (2-RDM). Like conventional approaches to CASSCF, variational 2-RDM (v2RDM) driven CASSCF captures nondynamical electron correlation in the active space, but it lacks a description of the remaining dynamical correlation effects. Such effects can be modeled through a combination of v2RDM-CASSCF and on-top pair-density functional theory (PDFT). The resulting v2RDM-CASSCF-PDFT approach provides a computationally inexpensive framework for describing both static and dynamical correlation effects in multiconfigurational and strongly correlated systems. On-top pair-density functionals can be derived from familiar Kohn-Sham exchange-correlation (XC) density functionals through the translation of the v2RDM-CASSCF reference densities [ Li Manni et al. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2014 , 10 , 3669 - 3680 ]. Translated and fully translated on-top PDFT versions of several common XC functionals are applied to the potential energy curves of N2, H2O, and CN-, as well as to the singlet/triplet energy splittings in the linear polyacene series. Using v2RDM-CASSCF-PDFT and the translated PBE functional, the singlet/triplet energy splitting of an infinitely long acene molecule is estimated to be 4.87 kcal mol-1.

Analytic Energy Gradients for Variational Two-Electron Reduced-Density Matrix Methods within the Density Fitting Approximation

Analytic energy gradients are presented for a variational two-electron reduced-density-matrix-driven complete active space self-consistent field (v2RDM-CASSCF) procedure that employs the density fitting (DF) approximation to the two-electron repulsion integrals. The DF approximation significantly reduces the computational cost of v2RDM-CASSCF gradient evaluation, in terms of both the number of floating-point operations and memory requirements, enabling geometry optimizations on much larger chemical systems than could previously be considered at this level of theory [ Maradzike et al., J. Chem. Theory Comput. , 2017 , 13 , 4113 - 4122 ]. The efficacy of v2RDM-CASSCF for computing equilibrium geometries and harmonic vibrational frequencies is assessed using a set of 25 small closed- and open-shell molecules. Equilibrium bond lengths from v2RDM-CASSCF differ from those obtained from configuration-interaction-driven CASSCF (CI-CASSCF) by 0.62 and 0.05 pm, depending on whether the optimal reduced-density matrices from v2RDM-CASSCF satisfy two-particle N-representability conditions (PQG) or PQG plus partial three-particle conditions (PQG+T2), respectively. Harmonic vibrational frequencies, which are obtained by finite differences of v2RDM-CASSCF analytic energy gradients, similarly demonstrate that quantitative agreement between v2RDM- and CI-CASSCF requires the consideration of partial three-particle N-representability conditions. Lastly, optimized geometries are obtained for the lowest-energy singlet and triplet states of the linear polyacene series up to dodecacene (C50H28), in which case the active space is comprised of 50 electrons in 50 orbitals. The v2RDM-CASSCF singlet-triplet energy gap extrapolated to an infinitely long linear acene molecule is found to be 7.8 kcal mol-1.

Analytical gradients of variational reduced-density-matrix and wavefunction-based methods from an overlap-reweighted semidefinite program

Analytical gradients of variational two-electron reduced-density matrix (2-RDM) methods are derived by transforming the atomic-orbital reduced-density matrices to remove the dependence of the N-representability conditions on the orbital-overlap matrix. The transformation, performed through a Cholesky decomposition of the geminal-overlap matrix, generates a Hellmann-Feynman-like expression for the gradient that only depends on the derivative of the transformed reduced Hamiltonian matrix. The formulation is applicable not only to the variational 2-RDM method but also to variational wavefunction methods like the full configuration interaction and complete active-space self-consistent-field. To illustrate, we apply the analytical gradients to perform geometry optimizations on several transition metal complexes, octahedral and trigonal prismatic CrF6 as well as the (ethylene-1,2-dithiolato)nickel, or Ni(edt)2, complex.

Static and Dynamic Electron Correlation in the Ligand Noninnocent Oxidation of Nickel Dithiolates.

Metal dithiolates have a wide range of applications from catalysis to molecular conductors with the ligands being the source of electrons during electrochemical oxidation in an effect known as ligand noninnocence. Recent large-scale variational two-electron reduced-density matrix (2-RDM) calculations of the vanadium oxo complex and manganese superoxide dismutase show that quantum entanglement stabilizes the addition of an electron to the ligands, providing a quantum mechanical explanation for ligand noninnocence. In this paper, we confirm and explore the ligand noninnocence in the electron oxidation series of bis(ethylene-1,2-dithiolato)nickel or [Ni(edt2)](-2,-1,0) with variational 2-RDM calculations. While previous wave function calculations of this series have selected only the ligand π orbitals as the critical (active) orbitals to be correlated, we find that both ligand π and nickel d orbitals must be correlated to generate a realistic picture of the electron-transfer process. Using the computed 2-RDM to seed a solution of the anti-Hermitian contracted Schrödinger equation, we predict that the singlet state is lower in energy than the triplet state, which is consistent with experimental observations.

Orbitals, Occupation Numbers, and Band Structure of Short One-Dimensional Cadmium Telluride Polymers.

Recent work found that soldering CdTe quantum dots together with a molecular CdTe polymer yielded field-effect transistors with much greater electron mobility than quantum dots alone. We present a computational study of the CdTe polymer using the active-space variational two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) method. While analogous complete active-space self-consistent field (CASSCF) methods scale exponentially with the number of active orbitals, the active-space variational 2-RDM method exhibits polynomial scaling. A CASSCF calculation using the (48o,64e) active space studied in this paper requires 1024 determinants and is therefore intractable, while the variational 2-RDM method in the same active space requires only 2.1 × 107 variables. Natural orbitals, natural-orbital occupations, charge gaps, and Mulliken charges are reported as a function of polymer length. The polymer, we find, is strongly correlated, despite possessing a simple sp3-hybridized bonding scheme. Calculations reveal the formation of a nearly saturated valence band as the polymer grows and a charge gap that decreases sharply with polymer length.

Enhanced Constraints for Accurate Lower Bounds on Many-Electron Quantum Energies from Variational Two-Electron Reduced Density Matrix Theory.

A central challenge of physics is the computation of strongly correlated quantum systems. The past ten years have witnessed the development and application of the variational calculation of the two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) without the wave function. In this Letter we present an orders-of-magnitude improvement in the accuracy of 2-RDM calculations without an increase in their computational cost. The advance is based on a low-rank, dual formulation of an important constraint on the 2-RDM, the T2 condition. Calculations are presented for metallic chains and a cadmium-selenide dimer. The low-scaling T2 condition will have significant applications in atomic and molecular, condensed-matter, and nuclear physics.

Strong Correlation in Acene Sheets from the Active-Space Variational Two-Electron Reduced Density Matrix Method: Effects of Symmetry and Size

Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a class of organic molecules with importance in several branches of science, including medicine, combustion chemistry, and materials science. The delocalized π-orbital systems in PAHs require highly accurate electronic structure methods to capture strong electron correlation. Treating correlation in PAHs has been challenging because (i) traditional wave function methods for strong correlation have not been applicable since they scale exponentially in the number of strongly correlated orbitals, and (ii) alternative methods such as the density-matrix renormalization group and variational two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) methods have not been applied beyond linear acene chains. In this paper we extend the earlier results from active-space variational 2-RDM theory [Gidofalvi, G.; Mazziotti, D. A. J. Chem. Phys. 2008, 129, 134108] to the more general two-dimensional arrangement of rings--acene sheets--to study the relationship between geometry and electron correlation in PAHs. The acene-sheet calculations, if performed with conventional wave function methods, would require wave function expansions with as many as 1.5 × 10(17) configuration state functions. To measure electron correlation, we employ several RDM-based metrics: (i) natural-orbital occupation numbers, (ii) the 1-RDM von Neumann entropy, (iii) the correlation energy per carbon atom, and (iv) the squared Frobenius norm of the cumulant 2-RDM. The results confirm a trend of increasing polyradical character with increasing molecular size previously observed in linear PAHs and reveal a corresponding trend in two-dimensional (arch-shaped) PAHs. Furthermore, in PAHs of similar size they show significant variations in correlation with geometry. PAHs with the strictly linear geometry (chains) exhibit more electron correlation than PAHs with nonlinear geometries (sheets).

Strong correlation in hydrogen chains and lattices using the variational two-electron reduced density matrix method

The variational two-electron reduced-density-matrix (2-RDM) method, scaling polynomially with the size of the system, was applied to linear chains and three-dimensional clusters of atomic hydrogen as large as H(64). In the case of the 4x4x4 hydrogen lattice of 64 hydrogen atoms, a correct description of the dissociation requires about 10(18) equally weighted determinants in the wave function, which is too large for traditional multireference methods. The correct energy in the dissociation limit was obtained from the variational 2-RDM method in contrast to Hartree-Fock and single-reference methods. Analysis of the occupation numbers demonstrates that even for 1.0 A bond distances the presence of strong electron correlation requires a multireference method. Three-dimensional systems exhibit a marked increase in electron correlation from one-dimensional systems regardless of size. The metal-to-insulator transition upon expansion of the clusters was studied using the decay of the 1-RDM off-diagonal elements. The variational 2-RDM method was shown to capture the metal-to-insulator transition and dissociation behavior accurately for all systems.

Molecular Geometries and Harmonic Frequencies from the Parametric Two-Electron Reduced Density Matrix Method with Application to the HCN ↔ HNC Isomerization

Energies, geometries, and harmonic frequencies of the chemical species in the HCN < = > HNC isomerization including the transition state are computed with the parametric variational two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) method. The parametric 2-RDM method parametrizes the 2-RDM with single- and double-excitation coefficients to be both size-consistent and nearly N-representable [DePrince, A. E., III; Mazziotti, D. A. Phys. Rev. A 2007, 73, 042501.]. With the inclusion of the zero-point energies of both species, the energy of HNC relative to HCN in a polarized valence triple-zeta basis set is 14.2 kcal/mol, which agrees with the experimental value of 14.8 +/- 2 kcal/mol. The present calculations provide the first assessment of the method for computing harmonic frequencies from a molecular geometry optimization. Bond lengths, angles, and harmonic frequencies are also computed for HF, CO, and H2O.

Computation of dipole, quadrupole, and octupole surfaces from the variational two-electron reduced density matrix method

Recent advances in the direct determination of the two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM) by imposing known N-representability conditions have mostly focused on the accuracy of molecular potential energy surfaces where multireference effects are significant. While the norm of the 2-RDM's deviation from full configuration interaction has been computed, few properties have been carefully investigated as a function of molecular geometry. Here the dipole, quadrupole, and octupole moments are computed for a range of molecular geometries. The addition of Erdahl's T2 condition [Int. J. Quantum Chem. 13, 697 (1978)] to the D, Q, and G conditions produces dipole and multipole moments that agree with full configuration interaction in a double-zeta basis set at all internuclear distances.