Generalizations of McWeeny's purification formula are developed within the formalism of the particle-hole duality from the theory of reduced density matrices. Each of the generalized purification formulas is expressed as a sum of the one-particle reduced density matrix (1-RDM) and a finite series in the product of the one-particle and the one-hole RDMs, a product which vanishes in the limit that the 1-RDM is idempotent. Two categories of purification formulas are explored: (i) formulas which treat the "occupied" and the "virtual" occupation numbers equivalently and (ii) formulas which treat these occupation numbers differently. The latter category includes and extends the purification formulas derived in the context of the 1,2-contracted Schrödinger equation [D. A. Mazziotti, J. Chem. Phys. 115, 8305 (2001)]. While the McWeeny purification minimizes the absolute error in the occupation numbers quadratically, the generalized purification formulas exhibit faster than quadratic convergence of the 1-RDM towards idempotency. Application of these purification formulas in existing algorithms for linear scaling will be explored and discussed including illustrative calculations on sodium wires of length 10, 20, 30, and 40 atoms.
Generalizations of McWeeny's purification formula are developed within the formalism of the particle-hole duality from the theory of reduced density matrices. Each of the generalized purification formulas is expressed as a sum of the one-particle reduced density matrix (1-RDM) and a finite series in the product of the one-particle and the one-hole RDMs, a product which vanishes in the limit that the 1-RDM is idempotent. Two categories of purification formulas are explored: (i) formulas which treat the "occupied" and the "virtual" occupation numbers equivalently and (ii) formulas which treat these occupation numbers differently. The latter category includes and extends the purification formulas derived in the context of the 1,2-contracted Schrödinger equation [D. A. Mazziotti, J. Chem. Phys. 115, 8305 (2001)]. While the McWeeny purification minimizes the absolute error in the occupation numbers quadratically, the generalized purification formulas exhibit faster than quadratic convergence of the 1-RDM towards idempotency. Application of these purification formulas in existing algorithms for linear scaling will be explored and discussed including illustrative calculations on sodium wires of length 10, 20, 30, and 40 atoms.
The notion of purification is generalized to treat correlated reduced density matrices. Traditionally, purification denotes the process by which a one-particle reduced density matrix (1-RDM) is made idempotent, that is, its eigenvalues are mapped to either 0 or 1. Purification of correlated RDMs is defined as the iterative process by which an arbitrary RDM is forced to satisfy several necessary N-representability conditions. Using the unitary decomposition of RDMs and the positivity conditions, we develop an algorithm to purify the 2-RDM. The algorithm is applied within the solution of the contracted Schrödinger equation CSE for the 2-RDM [D. A. Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. A 57, 4219 (1998)]. Previous attempts to solve the CSE by powerlike methods have frequently produced divergent energies, but we show that the purification process eliminates the divergent behavior for systematic and reliable convergence of the contracted power method to the N-particle energy.
A Lagrangian formulation for the constrained search for the N-representable one-particle density matrix based on the McWeeny idempotency error minimization is proposed, which converges systematically to the ground state. A closed form of the canonical purification is derived for which no a posteriori adjustment on the trace of the density matrix is needed. The relationship with comparable methods is discussed, showing their possible generalization through the hole-particle duality. The appealing simplicity of this self-consistent recursion relation along with its low computational complexity could prove useful as an alternative to diagonalization in solving dense and sparse matrix eigenvalue problems.
The solution of N-representability for the two-particle reduced density matrix (2-RDM) is intimately connected through the contracted Schr\"odinger equation with the problem of reconstructing the 3- and 4-RDM's from the 2-RDM [D. A. Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. A 57, 4219 (1998)]. We derive an explicit formula for building the 3-RDM from the 2-RDM which significantly improves the accuracy of the 3-RDM cumulant expansion. Calculations indicate that the improvement is better than that achieved by the correction of Nakatsuji and Yasuda (NY) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1039 (1996); Phys. Rev. A 56, 2648 (1997)]. We also present a more efficient formulation of the NY correction. Both the present and NY reconstructions are shown to satisfy the particle-hole duality. Comparison of the reconstruction methods is made through several molecules LiH, BeH2,BH3,H2O, and CH4, as well as systems with more general pairwise correlation.
A contracted Schrödinger equation (1,2-CSE) is derived for the class of Hamiltonians without explicit interactions including those from Hartree–Fock and density functional theories. With cumulant reconstruction of the two-particle reduced density matrix (2-RDM) from the one-particle-RDM (1-RDM), the 1,2-CSE may be expressed solely in terms of the 1-RDM. We prove that a 1-RDM satisfies the 1,2-CSE if and only if it is an eigenstate of the N-particle Schrödinger equation. The 1,2-CSE is solved through the development and implementation of a reduced, linear-scaling analog of the ordinary power method for finding matrix eigenvalues. The power formula for updating the 1-RDM requires fewer matrix operations than the gradient procedure derived by Li et al. [Phys. Rev. B 47, 10891 (1993)] and Daw [Phys. Rev. B 47, 10895 (1993)]. Convergence of the contracted power method with purification is illustrated with several molecules. While providing a new tool for semiempirical, Hartree–Fock, and density functional calculations, the 1,2-CSE also represents an initial step toward a linear-scaling algorithm for solving higher CSEs which explicitly treat electron correlation.
The general equation linking a q-order reduced density matrix (q-RDM) with the corresponding q-order hole reduced density matrix (q-HRDM) has been reported in the preceding paper [F. Colmenero, C. Perez del Valle, and C. Valdemoro, preceding paper, Phys. Rev. A 47, 971 (1993)]. In this equation, neither Kronecker \ensuremath{\delta} functions nor mixed products of elements of RDM's and HRDM's appear, and the part involving hole terms has the same structure as that involving particle terms. Recently [C. Valdemoro, Phys. Rev. A 45, 4462 (1992)], a similar equation for q=2 has been used to approximate the 2-RDM from the knowledge of the 1-RDM. Here, the 3-RDM and the 4-RDM are approximated by using the 2-RDM as an initial datum. The ultimate aim of this research is to develop an iterative method for solving the contracted form of the Schr\"odinger equation [L. Cohen and C. Frishberg, Phys. Rev. A 13, 927 (1976); H. Nakatsuji, ibid. 14, 41 (1976)]. A matrix form in the orbital representation of this equation is reported here. Finally, the second-order hypervirial equation, also in its matrix form, has been derived so that the quality of the results can be judged.
Practical measures of electronic decoherence, called distilled purities, that are applicable to many-body systems are introduced. While usual measures of electronic decoherence such as the purity employ the full N-particle density matrix which is generally unavailable, the distilled purities are based on the r-body reduced density matrices (r-RDMs) which are more accessible quantities. The r-body distilled purities are derivative quantities of the previously introduced r-body reduced purities [I. Franco and H. Appel, J. Chem. Phys. 139, 094109 (2013)] that measure the non-idempotency of the r-RDMs. Specifically, the distilled purities exploit the structure of the reduced purities to extract coherences between Slater determinants with integer occupations defined by a given single-particle basis that compose an electronic state. In this way, the distilled purities offer a practical platform to quantify coherences in a given basis that can be used to analyze the quantum dynamics of many-electron systems. Exact expressions for the one-body and two-body distilled purities are presented and the utility of the approach is exemplified via an analysis of the dynamics of oligo-acetylene as described by the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Hamiltonian. Last, the advantages and limitations of the purity, reduced purity, and distilled purity as measures of electronic coherence are discussed.