We present the density matrix renormalization group self-consistent field (DMRG-SCF) approach that is analogous to the complete active space self-consisted field (CASSCF) method but instead of using for the description of the active space the full configuration interaction (FCI) method, the DMRG-SCF uses the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. The DMRG-SCF approach, similarly to CASSCF, properly describes the multiconfigurational character of the wave function but avoids the exponential scaling of the FCI method and replaces it with a polynomial scaling. Hence, calculations for a larger number of orbitals and electrons in the active space are possible since the DMRG method provides an efficient tool to automatically select from the full Hilbert space the many-body contracted basis states that are the most important for the description of the wave function.
In previous work we have shown that the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) enables near-exact calculations in active spaces much larger than are possible with traditional complete active space algorithms. Here, we implement orbital optimization with the DMRG to further allow the self-consistent improvement of the active orbitals, as is done in the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) method. We use our resulting DMRG-CASSCF method to study the low-lying excited states of the all-trans polyenes up to C24H26 as well as beta-carotene, correlating with near-exact accuracy the optimized complete pi-valence space with up to 24 active electrons and orbitals, and analyze our results in the light of the recent discovery from resonance Raman experiments of new optically dark states in the spectrum.
This paper describes an interface between the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method and the complete active-space self-consistent field (CASSCF) method and its analytical gradient, as well as an extension to the second-order perturbation theory (CASPT2) method. This interfacing allows large active-space multi-reference computations to be easily performed. The interface and its extension are both implemented in terms of reduced density matrices (RDMs) which can be efficiently computed via the DMRG sweep algorithm. We also present benchmark results showing that, in practice, the DMRG-CASSCF calculations scale with active-space size in a polynomial manner in the case of quasi-1D systems. Geometry optimization of a binuclear iron-sulfur cluster using the DMRG-CASSCF analytical gradient is demonstrated, indicating that the inclusion of the valence p-orbitals of sulfur and double-shell d-orbitals of iron lead to non-negligible changes in the geometry compared to the results of small active-space calculations. With the exception of the selection of M values, many computational settings in these practical DMRG calculations have been tuned and black-boxed in our interface, and so the resulting DMRG-CASSCF and DMRG-CASPT2 calculations are now available to novice users as a common tool to compute strongly correlated electronic wavefunctions.
We present an efficient orbital optimization procedure that combines the highly GPU accelerated, spin-adapted density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method with the complete active space self-consistent field (CAS-SCF) approach for quantum chemistry implemented in the ORCA program package. Leveraging the computational power of the latest generation of Nvidia GPU hardware, we perform CAS-SCF based orbital optimizations for unprecedented CAS sizes of up to 82 electrons in 82 orbitals [CAS(82,82)] in molecular systems comprising active space sizes of hundreds of electrons in thousands of orbitals. For both the NVIDIA DGX-A100 and DGX-H100 hardware, we provide a detailed scaling and error analysis of our DMRG-SCF approach for benchmark systems consisting of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and iron-sulfur complexes of varying sizes. Our efforts demonstrate for the first time that highly accurate DMRG calculations at large bond dimensions are critical for obtaining reliably converged CAS-SCF energies. For the more challenging iron-sulfur benchmark systems, we furthermore find the optimized orbitals of a converged CAS-SCF calculation to depend more sensitively on the DMRG parameters than those for the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The ability to obtain converged CAS-SCF energies and orbitals for active spaces of such large sizes within days reduces the challenges of including the appropriate orbitals into the CAS or selecting the correct minimal CAS, and may open up entirely new avenues for tackling strongly correlated molecular systems.
This article presents an efficient and parallelized implementation of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm for quantum chemistry calculations. The DMRG method as a large-scale multireference electronic structure model is by nature particularly efficient for one-dimensionally correlated systems, while the present development is oriented toward applications for polynuclear transition metal compounds, in which the macroscopic one-dimensional structure of electron correlation is absent. A straightforward extension of the DMRG algorithm is proposed with further improvements and aggressive optimizations to allow its application with large multireference active space, which is often demanded for metal compound calculations. Special efficiency is achieved by making better use of sparsity and symmetry in the operator and wave function representations. By accomplishing computationally intensive DMRG calculations, the authors have found that a large number of renormalized basis states are required to represent high entanglement of the electron correlation for metal compound applications, and it is crucial to adopt auxiliary perturbative correction to the projected density matrix during the DMRG sweep optimization in order to attain proper convergence to the solution. Potential energy curve calculations for the Cr(2) molecule near the known equilibrium precisely predicted the full configuration interaction energies with a correlation space of 24 electrons in 30 orbitals [denoted by (24e,30o)]. The energies are demonstrated to be accurate to 0.6mE(h) (the error from the extrapolated best value) when as many as 10,000 renormalized basis states are employed for the left and right DMRG block representations. The relative energy curves for [Cu(2)O(2)](2+) along the isomerization coordinate were obtained from DMRG and other correlated calculations, for which a fairly large orbital space (32e,62o) is modeled as a full correlation space. The DMRG prediction nearly overlaps with the energy curve from the coupled cluster with singles, doubles, and perturbative triple [CCSD(T)] calculations, while the multireference complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) calculations with the small reference configuration (8e,8o) are found to overestimate the biradical character of the electronic state of [Cu(2)O(2)](2+) according to the one-electron density matrix analysis.
Molecular systems in chemistry often have wave functions with substantial contributions from two-or-more electronic configurations. Because traditional complete-active-space self-consistent-field (CASSCF) methods scale exponentially with the number N of active electrons, their applicability is limited to small active spaces. In this paper we develop an active-space variational two-electron reduced-density-matrix (2-RDM) method in which the expensive diagonalization is replaced by a variational 2-RDM calculation where the 2-RDM is constrained by approximate N-representability conditions. Optimization of the constrained 2-RDM is accomplished by large-scale semidefinite programming [Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 213001 (2004)]. Because the computational cost of the active-space 2-RDM method scales polynomially as r(a)(6) where r(a) is the number of active orbitals, the method can be applied to treat active spaces that are too large for conventional CASSCF. The active-space 2-RDM method performs two steps: (i) variational calculation of the 2-RDM in the active space and (ii) optimization of the active orbitals by Jacobi rotations. For large basis sets this two-step 2-RDM method is more efficient than the one-step, low-rank variational 2-RDM method [Gidofalvi and Mazziotti, J. Chem. Phys. 127, 244105 (2007)]. Applications are made to HF, H(2)O, and N(2) as well as n-acene chains for n=2-8. When n>4, the acenes cannot be treated by conventional CASSCF methods; for example, when n=8, CASSCF requires optimization over approximately 1.47x10(17) configuration state functions. The natural occupation numbers of the n-acenes show the emergence of bi- and polyradical character with increasing chain length.