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The Journal of Chemical Physics

The density matrix renormalization group self-consistent field method: Orbital optimization with the density matrix renormalization group method in the active space

Dominika Zgid, Marcel Nooijen

Published Apr 11, 2008• 202 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1063/1.2883981

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Accurate prediction of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) shielding constants for strongly correlated systems remains challenging. In this context, we present a density matrix renormalization group self-consistent-field (DMRG-SCF) implementation for NMR shielding calculations with large active spaces. Within a gauge-including atomic orbital DMRG-SCF (GIAO-DMRG-SCF) framework, we formulate and solve the coupled-perturbed DMRG-SCF (CP-DMRG-SCF) equations using local-site effective Hamiltonians. This approach enables the direct evaluation of the wave function's response to an external magnetic field. In the limit of small active spaces, the computed NMR shieldings are in agreement with conventional complete active space self-consistent-field (CASSCF) results, while the present approach naturally extends to larger active spaces inaccessible to standard multiconfigurational methods. Applications to a series of molecular systems, particularly strongly correlated transition metal complexes, demonstrate that the proposed implementation can be both reliable and accurate.
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 a second-order perturbation theory based on a density matrix renormalization group self-consistent field (DMRG-SCF) reference function. The method reproduces the solution of the complete active space with second-order perturbation theory (CASPT2) when the DMRG reference function is represented by a sufficiently large number of renormalized many-body basis, thereby being named DMRG-CASPT2 method. The DMRG-SCF is able to describe non-dynamical correlation with large active space that is insurmountable to the conventional CASSCF method, while the second-order perturbation theory provides an efficient description of dynamical correlation effects. The capability of our implementation is demonstrated for an application to the potential energy curve of the chromium dimer, which is one of the most demanding multireference systems that require best electronic structure treatment for non-dynamical and dynamical correlation as well as large basis sets. The DMRG-CASPT2/cc-pwCV5Z calculations were performed with a large (3d double-shell) active space consisting of 28 orbitals. Our approach using large-size DMRG reference addressed the problems of why the dissociation energy is largely overestimated by CASPT2 with the small active space consisting of 12 orbitals (3d4s), and also is oversensitive to the choice of the zeroth-order Hamiltonian.
The density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method, which can deal with a large active space composed of tens of orbitals, is nowadays widely used as an efficient addition to traditional complete active space (CAS)-based approaches. In this paper, we present the DMRG algorithm with a multi-level (ML) control of the active space based on chemical intuition-based hierarchical orbital ordering, which is called as ML-DMRG with its self-consistent field (SCF) variant ML-DMRG-SCF. Ground and excited state calculations of H2O, N2, indole, and Cr2 with comparisons to DMRG references using fixed number of kept states (M) illustrate that ML-type DMRG calculations can obtain noticeable efficiency gains. It is also shown that the orbital re-ordering based on hierarchical multiple active subspaces may be beneficial for reducing computational time for not only ML-DMRG calculations but also DMRG ones with fixed M values.