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arXiv:2503.08430 · Electronic Structure

Fully numerical Hartree-Fock calculations for atoms and small molecules with quantics tensor trains

Paul Haubenwallner, Matthias Heller

Published May 16, 2025• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract We present a fully numerical framework for the optimization of molecule-specific quantum chemical basis functions within the quantics tensor train format using a finite-difference scheme. The optimization is driven by solving the Hartree–Fock equations (HF) with the density-matrix renormalization group algorithm on Cartesian grids that are iteratively refined. In contrast to the standard way of tackling the mean-field problem by expressing the molecular orbitals as linear combinations of atomic orbitals (LCAO) our method only requires as much basis functions as there are electrons within the system. Benchmark calculations for atoms and molecules with up to ten electrons show excellent agreement with LCAO calculations with large basis sets supporting the validity of the tensor network approach. Our work therefore offers a promising alternative to well-established HF-solvers and could pave the way to define highly accurate, fully numerical, molecule-adaptive basis sets, which, in the future, could lead to benefits for post-HF calculations.

DOI
10.1088/2516-1075/add9f8

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Abstract We present a fully numerical framework for the optimization of molecule-specific quantum chemical basis functions within the quantics tensor train format using a finite-difference scheme. The optimization is driven by solving the Hartree–Fock equations (HF) with the density-matrix renormalization group algorithm on Cartesian grids that are iteratively refined. In contrast to the standard way of tackling the mean-field problem by expressing the molecular orbitals as linear combinations of atomic orbitals (LCAO) our method only requires as much basis functions as there are electrons within the system. Benchmark calculations for atoms and molecules with up to ten electrons show excellent agreement with LCAO calculations with large basis sets supporting the validity of the tensor network approach. Our work therefore offers a promising alternative to well-established HF-solvers and could pave the way to define highly accurate, fully numerical, molecule-adaptive basis sets, which, in the future, could lead to benefits for post-HF calculations.
This work systematically investigates the tensor train (TT) compressibility of grid-represented Hartree-Fock (HF) and Density Functional Theory (DFT) orbitals across a range of molecular systems and TT formats (standard, quantized, and z-permuted quantized). To overcome limitations of current TT solvers, we employ a novel orthogonal tensor train cross approximation (TT-Cross-Orth) to decompose Hartree-Fock and DFT orbitals into TTs, enabling the study of large molecules. We find that the approximation error decreases exponentially with TT-rank for all systems studied and identify quantized tensor train as the most efficient TT format. Furthermore, we identify quasi-periodic and symmetric structures-including graphene, graphite layers, and polyalanine helices-as particularly favorable candidates exhibiting sublinear rank growth with system size. The tensor train approach automatically compresses quasi-symmetries and systems with symmetry defects, which makes it an attractive approach for materials science applications. TT-Cross-Orth enforces orthogonality during the decomposition, thereby improving stability and reducing the number of function evaluations compared to standard TT-Cross. These findings establish an empirical foundation for the development of scalable tensor network methods for HF and DFT.
We resume the recent successes of the grid-based tensor numerical methods and discuss their prospects in real-space electronic structure calculations. These methods, based on the low-rank representation of the multidimensional functions and integral operators, first appeared as an accurate tensor calculus for the 3D Hartree potential using 1D complexity operations, and have evolved to entirely grid-based tensor-structured 3D Hartree-Fock eigenvalue solver. It benefits from tensor calculation of the core Hamiltonian and two-electron integrals (TEI) in O(n log n) complexity using the rank-structured approximation of basis functions, electron densities and convolution integral operators all represented on 3D n × n × n Cartesian grids. The algorithm for calculating TEI tensor in a form of the Cholesky decomposition is based on multiple factorizations using algebraic 1D "density fitting" scheme, which yield an almost irreducible number of product basis functions involved in the 3D convolution integrals, depending on a threshold ε > 0. The basis functions are not restricted to separable Gaussians, since the analytical integration is substituted by high-precision tensor-structured numerical quadratures. The tensor approaches to post-Hartree-Fock calculations for the MP2 energy correction and for the Bethe-Salpeter excitation energies, based on using low-rank factorizations and the reduced basis method, were recently introduced. Another direction is towards the tensor-based Hartree-Fock numerical scheme for finite lattices, where one of the numerical challenges is the summation of electrostatic potentials of a large number of nuclei. The 3D grid-based tensor method for calculation of a potential sum on a L × L × L lattice manifests the linear in L computational work, O(L), instead of the usual O(L(3) log L) scaling by the Ewald-type approaches.
Abstract In this paper, the tensor-structured numerical evaluation of the Coulomb and exchange operators in the Hartree-Fock equation is supplemented by the usage of recent quantized-TT (QTT) formats. It leads to O(log n) complexity at computationally extensive stages in the rank-structured calculation with the respective 3D Hartree and exchange potentials discretized on large n×n×n Cartesian grids. The numerical examples for some volumetric organic molecules confirm that the QTT ranks of these potentials are nearly independent of the one-dimension grid size n. Thus, paradoxically, the complexity of the grid-based evaluation of the Coulumb and exchange matrices becomes almost independent of the grid size, being regulated only by the structure of a molecular system. As a result, the grid approximation of the Hartree-Fock equation allows to gain the high resolution with a guaranteed accuracy.
The conventional numerical methods when applied to multidimensional problems suffer from the so-called "curse of dimensionality", that cannot be eliminated by using parallel architectures and high performance computing. The novel tensor numerical methods are based on a "smart" rank-structured tensor representation of the multivariate functions and operators discretized on Cartesian grids thus reducing solution of the multidimensional integral-differential equations to 1D calculations. We explain basic tensor formats and algorithms and show how the orthogonal Tucker tensor decomposition originating from chemometrics made a revolution in numerical analysis, relying on rigorous results from approximation theory. Benefits of tensor approach are demonstrated in ab-initio electronic structure calculations. Computation of the 3D convolution integrals for functions with multiple singularities is replaced by a sequence of 1D operations, thus enabling accurate MATLAB calculations on a laptop using 3D uniform tensor grids of the size up to 10 15 . Fast tensor-based Hartree-Fock solver, incorporating the grid-based low-rank factorization of the two-electron integrals, serves as a prerequisite for economical calculation of the excitation energies of molecules. Tensor approach suggests efficient grid-based numerical treatment of the long-range electrostatic potentials on large 3D finite lattices with defects.The novel range-separated tensor format applies to interaction potentials of multi-particle systems of general type opening the new prospects for tensor methods in scientific computing. This research monograph presenting the modern tensor techniques applied to problems in quantum chemistry may be interesting for a wide audience of students and scientists working in computational chemistry, material science and scientific computing.
Quantum-mechanical calculations based on Kohn–Sham density functional theory (DFT) played a significant role in accurately predicting various aspects of materials behavior over the past decade. The Kohn–Sham approach to DFT reduces the many-body Schrodinger (eigen value) problem of interacting electrons into an equivalent problem of noninteracting electrons in an effective mean field that is governed by electron-density. Despite the reduced computational complexity of Kohn–Sham DFT, large-scale DFT calculations are still computationally very demanding with the resulting computational complexity scaling cubically with number of atoms in a given materials system. Numerical algorithms with reduced scaling behavior which are robust, computationally efficient and scalable on parallel computing architectures are always desirable to enable simulations at larger scales and on more complex systems. Following this line of thought, this study explores the use of tensor structured methods for ab-initio numerical solution of Kohn–Sham equations arising in DFT calculations. Earlier studies on tensor-structured methods have been quite successful in the accurate calculation of Hartree and the nonlocal exchange operators arising in the Hartree–Fock equations. A recent investigation of low-rank Tucker-type decomposition of the electron-density of large aluminum clusters (obtained from the finite-element discretization of orbital free DFT) shows the exponential decay of approximation error with respect to Tucker rank (number of tensor-basis functions in Tucker type representation). The results also indicate a smaller Tucker rank for the accurate representation of the electron density and is only weakly dependent on the system sizes studied. The promising success of tensor-structured techniques in resolving the electronic structure of material systems has enabled us to take a step further. In this study, we propose a systematic way of computing a globally adapted Tucker-type basis for solving the Kohn–Sham DFT problem by using a separable approximation of the Kohn–Sham Hamiltonian. Further, the resulting Kohn–Sham eigenvalue problem is projected into the aforementioned Tucker basis and is solved for ground-state energy using a self-consistent field iteration. The rank of the resulting Tucker representation and the computational complexity of the calculation are examined on representative benchmark examples involving metallic and insulating systems.
This work involves studying and developing new algorithms for molecular numerical integration used for density functional theory and new algorithms for Hartree-Fock method. -- New insight about molecular numerical integration is presented through a detailed study of the performance of some of the well known grids in addition to our implementation of the most recently developed MultiExp grid. A comprehensive study of numerical integration was conducted by evaluating several molecular properties: number of electrons, dipole moment, potential energy, and Coulomb repulsion energy using fifteen grids including a large benchmark grid. The standard grid (SG-1) and a slightly modified version of the Treutler and Alhrichs (TA) grid performed reasonably well. The MultiExp grid, which is more efficient, was studied as well and found to be less accurate. -- Studying large molecules using Hartree-Fock method is a challenge both in terms of CPU time and memory requirements. However, there is a high demand to perform quantum chemical calculations for large molecules. Projection from a smaller basis set to a larger basis set was studied in detail. It was found that projection from the STO-3G basis set to the 6-31G basis set performed well. Projection was used to develop a new version of a divide and conquer algorithm. Our divide and conquer algorithm was used to calculate the protonation energy for a series of peptides. Algorithms to skip calculating two-electron integrals of zero or negligible values are presented in addition to an algorithm to generate a better initial guess.