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arXiv:1606.07454 · Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation

Rigorous Ab Initio Quantum Embedding for Quantum Chemistry Using Green’s Function Theory: Screened Interaction, Nonlocal Self-Energy Relaxation, Orbital Basis, and Chemical Accuracy

Lan Nguyen Tran, Alexei A. Kananenka, Dominika Zgid

Published Sep 2, 2016• 50 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present a detailed discussion of the self-energy embedding theory (SEET), which is a quantum embedding scheme allowing us to describe a chosen subsystem very accurately while keeping the description of the environment at a lower level. We apply SEET to molecular examples where our chosen subsystem is made out of a set of strongly correlated orbitals while the weakly correlated orbitals constitute an environment. Consequently, a highly accurate method is used to calculate the self-energy for the system, while a lower-level method is employed to find the self-energy for the environment. Such a self-energy separation is very general, and to make the SEET procedure applicable to multiple systems, a detailed and practical procedure for the evaluation of the system and environment self-energy is necessary. We list all of the intricacies for one of the possible procedures while focusing our discussion on many practical implementation aspects such as the choice of best orbital basis, impurity solver, and many steps necessary to reach chemical accuracy. Finally, on a set of carefully chosen molecular examples, we demonstrate that SEET, which is a controlled, systematically improvable Green's function method, can be as accurate as established wave function quantum chemistry methods.

DOI
10.1021/acs.jctc.6b00638

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We present a detailed discussion of the self-energy embedding theory (SEET), which is a quantum embedding scheme allowing us to describe a chosen subsystem very accurately while keeping the description of the environment at a lower level. We apply SEET to molecular examples where our chosen subsystem is made out of a set of strongly correlated orbitals while the weakly correlated orbitals constitute an environment. Consequently, a highly accurate method is used to calculate the self-energy for the system, while a lower-level method is employed to find the self-energy for the environment. Such a self-energy separation is very general, and to make the SEET procedure applicable to multiple systems, a detailed and practical procedure for the evaluation of the system and environment self-energy is necessary. We list all of the intricacies for one of the possible procedures while focusing our discussion on many practical implementation aspects such as the choice of best orbital basis, impurity solver, and many steps necessary to reach chemical accuracy. Finally, on a set of carefully chosen molecular examples, we demonstrate that SEET, which is a controlled, systematically improvable Green's function method, can be as accurate as established wave function quantum chemistry methods.
Ab initio quantum chemistry calculations for systems with large active spaces are notoriously difficult and cannot be successfully tackled by standard methods. We generalize a Green's function QM/QM embedding method called self-energy embedding theory (SEET) that has the potential to be successfully employed to treat large active spaces. In generalized SEET, active orbitals are grouped into intersecting groups of a few orbitals, allowing us to perform multiple parallel calculations yielding results comparable to the full active-space treatment. We examine generalized SEET on a series of examples and discuss a hierarchy of systematically improvable approximations.
The self-energy embedding theory (SEET), in which the active space self-energy is embedded in the self-energy obtained from a perturbative method treating the non-local correlation effects, was recently developed in our group. In SEET, the double counting problem does not appear and the accuracy can be improved either by increasing the perturbation order or by enlarging the active space. This method was first calibrated for the 2D Hubbard lattice showing promising results. In this paper, we report an extension of SEET to quantum chemical ab initio Hamiltonians for applications to molecular systems. The self-consistent second-order Green's function method is used to describe the non-local correlations, while the full configuration interaction method is carried out to capture strong correlation within the active space. Using few proof-of-concept examples, we show that SEET yields results of comparable quality to n-electron valence state second-order perturbation theory with the same active space, and furthermore, the full active space can be split into smaller active spaces without further implementation. Moreover, SEET avoids intruder states and does not require any high-order reduced density matrices. These advantages show that SEET is a promising method to describe physical and chemical properties of challenging molecules requiring large active spaces.
We present a theoretical framework and implementation details for self-energy embedding theory (SEET) with the GW approximation for the treatment of weakly correlated degrees of freedom and configuration interactions solver for handing the strongly correlated degrees. On a series of molecular examples, for which the exact results are known within a given basis, we demonstrate that SEET(CI/GW) is a systematically improvable and well controlled method capable of giving accurate results and well behaved causal self-energies and Green's functions. We compare the theoretical framework of SEET(CI/GW) to that of GW+DMFT and comment on differences between these to approaches that aim to treat both strongly and weakly correlated simultaneously.
We present an implementation of the self-energy embedding theory (SEET) for periodic systems and provide a fully self-consistent embedding solution for a simple realistic periodic problem-one-dimensional (1D) crystalline hydrogen-that displays many of the features present in complex real materials. For this system, we observe a remarkable agreement between our finite-temperature periodic implementation results and well-established and accurate zero-temperature auxiliary quantum Monte Carlo data extrapolated to thermodynamic limit. We discuss differences and similarities with other Green's function embedding methods and provide the detailed algorithmic steps crucial for highly accurate and reproducible results.
Understanding emergent many-body phenomena in correlated materials remains one of the grandest challenges in solid-state quantum chemistry calculations. The individuality of electrons diminishes as correlation increases, which leads to the emergence of new features in the system. Seeking to address such problems accurately requires the aid of non-perturbative many-body techniques as well as the corresponding high-quality basis sets. In periodic systems, a given element may be present in different spatial arrangements displaying vastly different physical and chemical properties, and an elemental basis set independent of the physical properties of materials may lead to significant simulation inaccuracies. In fact, with the rapid progress of quantum chemistry methods in condensed-phase simulations, the need for a library of reliable Gaussian basis sets explicitly designed for periodic calculations has become urgent. In the meantime, the development of parameter-free, systematic and reliable quantum chemistry methods for simultaneously treating weak and strong correlations in periodic systems has never stopped. Their ability to treat realistic solid materials needs to be tested, and the obtained results can serve as benchmarks for empirical parameter-guided solid-state calculations. In this thesis, we present numerical studies of various solid-state systems, emphasizing the design and optimization of Gaussian basis sets and assessing the band structure properties of the periodic solid systems. The work begins by introducing the theoretical framework of the electronic structure theory and presenting the fundamentals of a fully self-consistent GW approximation and the self-energy embedding theory (SEET) in Chapters 2 and 3. It continues with a description of the Gaussian basis set optimization scheme we devised for solid-state quantum chemistry calculations. The scheme we present is designed to avoid a lack of material specificity within a given basis set by simultaneously minimizing the total energy of the system and optimizing the band energies when compared to the reference plane wave calculation while accounting for the overlap matrix condition number. We compare the quality of the Gaussian basis sets generated via our method against the existing basis sets. And the optimization scheme is tested to yield improved results. We finally present a quantitative study of electronic properties of realistic materials with the treatment of Green's function based weakly correlated self-consistent GW approximation and the strongly correlated self-energy embedding theory. In the transition metal oxide BiVO3, we found the inaccurate illustration of orbitals including t_{2g} in transition metal Vanadium by DFT. Our calculation shows a systematic trend of DFT failure in illustrating both insulating and metallic solutions, demonstrating the dangers of using DFT when the experimental data is scarce.
Within the self-energy embedding theory (SEET) framework, we study the coupled cluster Green's function (GFCC) method in two different contexts: as a method to treat either the system or the environment present in the embedding construction. Our study reveals that when GFCC is used to treat the environment we do not see improvement in total energies in comparison to the coupled cluster method itself. To rationalize this puzzling result, we analyze the performance of GFCC as an impurity solver with a series of transition metal oxides. These studies shed light on the strength and weaknesses of such a solver and demonstrate that such a solver gives very accurate results when the size of the impurity is small. We investigate if it is possible to achieve a systematic accuracy of the embedding solution when we increase the size of the impurity problem. We found that in such a case, the performance of the solver worsens, both in terms of finding the ground state solution of the impurity problem and the self-energies produced. We concluded that increasing the rank of GFCC solver is necessary to be able to enlarge impurity problems and achieve a reliable accuracy. We also have shown that natural orbitals from weakly correlated perturbative methods are better suited than symmetrized atomic orbitals (SAO) when the total energy of the system is the target quantity.