The continuous demand for higher accuracy in computational chemistry necessitates the development of advanced many-body electronic structure methods. However, the derivation and efficient implementation of these theories constitute a significant bottleneck. As the rank of the associated tensors increases, the governing equations explode in complexity, rendering manual implementation labor-intensive, error-prone, and difficult to optimize for modern hardware. To address this challenge, this dissertation presents SeQuant, a comprehensive framework for the automated derivation and parallel implementation of many-body quantum chemistry methods. Built upon a robust symbolic algebra engine, SeQuant allows for the expression of theories in the natural language of second quantization. It automates the transformation of high-level theoretical ansatzes into explicit tensor contraction expressions and subsequently generates optimized, high-performance C++ code. A central innovation of this work is the extension of automated implementation to reduced-scaling methods, which exploit the sparsity inherent in electronic correlation. We introduce a novel "tensor-of-tensors" data structure designed to manage the irregular sparsity patterns of Pair Natural Orbital (PNO) formulations. This development enables the first fully automated implementation of PNO-Coupled Cluster (PNO-CC) methods, bridging the gap between symbolic abstraction and the runtime requirements of sparse tensor algebra. The results demonstrate that SeQuant not only reproduces established dense methods (such as CCSD and CCSDT) with high fidelity but also effectively handles the complexity of sparse, local correlation approaches. By decoupling the complexity of the physics from the details of the implementation, this framework establishes a new paradigm for method development, dramatically accelerating the translation of theoretical insights into computational reality.
The continuous demand for higher accuracy in computational chemistry necessitates the development of advanced many-body electronic structure methods. However, the derivation and efficient implementation of these theories constitute a significant bottleneck. As the rank of the associated tensors increases, the governing equations explode in complexity, rendering manual implementation labor-intensive, error-prone, and difficult to optimize for modern hardware. To address this challenge, this dissertation presents SeQuant, a comprehensive framework for the automated derivation and parallel implementation of many-body quantum chemistry methods. Built upon a robust symbolic algebra engine, SeQuant allows for the expression of theories in the natural language of second quantization. It automates the transformation of high-level theoretical ansatzes into explicit tensor contraction expressions and subsequently generates optimized, high-performance C++ code. A central innovation of this work is the extension of automated implementation to reduced-scaling methods, which exploit the sparsity inherent in electronic correlation. We introduce a novel "tensor-of-tensors" data structure designed to manage the irregular sparsity patterns of Pair Natural Orbital (PNO) formulations. This development enables the first fully automated implementation of PNO-Coupled Cluster (PNO-CC) methods, bridging the gap between symbolic abstraction and the runtime requirements of sparse tensor algebra. The results demonstrate that SeQuant not only reproduces established dense methods (such as CCSD and CCSDT) with high fidelity but also effectively handles the complexity of sparse, local correlation approaches. By decoupling the complexity of the physics from the details of the implementation, this framework establishes a new paradigm for method development, dramatically accelerating the translation of theoretical insights into computational reality.
The ultimate goal of electronic structure theory is solving the electronic Schr¨odinger Equation. However, even accurate approximations of solving Schr¨odinger Equation, such as high order coupled cluster theories, require computational efforts that are too demanding to be applied on large chemical systems. This thesis tackles the problem of curse of dimensionality: how to reduce the time complexity of high-accuracy coupled cluster methods in order to accelerate computations of molecular energy. On one hand, we believe that low-rank approximation (i.e. Tensor HyperContraction) of high-order tensors appearing in coupled cluster theory is a promising way to achieve rank-reduced coupled cluster theory. On the other hand, we think that the work of deriving, optimizing and implementing low-rank approximated coupled cluster theory is both tedious and repetitious, and shall be performed by an automatic code engine other than chemists. In this thesis, we introduce our chemistry equation compiler, Autom: a code engine that is designed for automatically deriving, optimizing and implementing low-rank approximated coupled cluster theories. With Autom, the development of electronic theories is greatly simplified. Autom can easily generate runnable codes in minutes for tensor-algebra based chemistry equations with customized low-rank approximation rules; conventionally, such procedure may take an expert weeks or even months to manually program. This thesis roughly consists of two parts. In the first part, we aim to cover the lowrank approximation techniques for high-accuracy coupled cluster theories, emphasizing on two new factorization techniques we developed especially for several coupled cluster theories including triple contributions. In the second part, we demonstrate the algorithms of our automatic code engine. We also summarize recent advances of domain specific compilers in Machine Learning community and discuss future directions for compute graph optimization. We believe that this new software infrastructure holds great promise for future chemistry package designs.
This thesis deals with selected aspects of a new implementation of many-body methods which can be formulated in the framework of second quantization, in particular the coupled-cluster (CC) method with arbitrary excitation level. Coupled-cluster is one of the most successful and widely used quantum chemical methods for accurate calculations on small to medium-sized molecules. Since it employs a nonlinear parametrization of the wave function, its implementation is rather difficult, in particular if higher (i.e. more than double) excitations are to be included. The latter is necessary to obtain highly accurate results and also as a prerequisite for the generalization to multi-reference cases. The implementation described here has a twofold focus. One is on generality and flexibility regarding the method to be implemented, the other is on efficiency. To achieve flexibility, it is useful to have a machinery which automatically derives working equations for a given method. We realize this by applying techniques of second quantization. This work treats in particular the last step of this procedure, namely the simplification of the resulting equations by the identification of equivalent terms. The algorithm used here is based on the interpretation of algebraic terms as graphs. The derived CC equations then have to be solved iteratively. The efficiency of the program is mainly determined by the evaluation of the occurring expressions, which has to be done in each iteration step. The evaluation is split up in a sequence of tensor contractions. Their generic implementation is complicated by the particular structure of the involved tensors. We reduce each contraction to a sequence of matrix multiplications, which requires a previous data rearranging. But since matrix multiplication is the most efficient operation on modern computers, this additional effort pays off. Preliminary tests show that our program is at least as fast as the most efficient general coupled-cluster implementation so far, and the relation is expected to improve for calculations with larger basis sets where the matrix multiplication becomes the time-determining step. Finally, we give an outlook to possible further developments. In particular, the preparation of the equations before the actual evaluation (factorization) offers much potential for optimizations which we do not exploit at the moment, in contrast to the program with which we compare, which employs at least a partial optimization at this point.
Computational many-body theories in quantum chemistry, condensed matter, and nuclear physics aim to provide sufficiently accurate description of and insights into the motion of many interacting particles. Due to their intrinsic complexity, the development of such theories generally involves very complex, tedious, and error-prone symbolic manipulations. Here a complete solution to automate the symbolics in many-body theory development is attempted. General data structures based on an existing computer algebra system are designed to specifically address the symbolic problems for which there is currently no satisfactory handling. Based on the data structures, algorithms are given to accomplish common symbolic manipulations and simplifications. Noncommutative algebraic systems, tensors with symmetry, and symbolic summations can all enjoy deep simplifications efficient enough for theories of very complex form. After the symbolic derivation, novel algorithms for automatic optimization of tensor contractions and their sums are devised, which can be used together with automatic code generation tools. In this way, the burden of symbolic tasks in theory development can be vastly reduced, with the potential to spare scientists more time and energy for the actual art and science of many-body theories.
We have developed a symbolic manipulation program and program generator (tensor contraction engine or TCE) that abstracts and automates the time-consuming, error-prone processes of deriving the working equations of a well-defined model of second-quantized many-electron theories and synthesizing efficient parallel computer programs on the basis of these equations. Provided an ansatz of a many-electron theory model, TCE performs valid contractions of creation and annihilation operators according to Wick's theorem, consolidates identical terms, and reduces the expressions into the form of multiple tensor contractions acted upon by permutation operators. It subsequently determines the binary contraction order for each multiple tensor contraction with the minimal operation and memory cost, factorizes common binary contractions (defines intermediate tensors), and identifies reusable intermediates. The resulting ordered list of binary tensor contractions, additions, and index permutations is translated into an optimized program that is combined with the NWCHEM and UTCHEM computational chemistry software packages. The programs synthesized by TCE take advantage of spin symmetry (within the spin−orbital formalisms), real Abelian point-group symmetry, and index permutation symmetry at every stage of the calculations to minimize the number of arithmetic operations and storage requirement, adjust the peak local memory usage by index-range tiling, and support parallel I/O interfaces and dynamic load balancing for parallel executions. We demonstrate the utility of TCE through automatic derivation and implementation of parallel programs for a range of predictive computational methods configuration-interaction theory (CISD, CISDT, CISDTQ), generalized many-body perturbation theory [MBPT(2), MBPT(3), MBPT(4)], and coupled-cluster theory (LCCD, CCD, LCCSD, CCSD, QCISD, CCSDT, and CCSDTQ), some for the first time and discuss the performance of the implemented programs.
Accurate correlated electronic structure methods involve a significant amount of computations and can be only employed to small molecular systems. For example, the coupled-cluster singles, doubles, and perturbative triples model (CCSD(T)), which is known as the ``gold standard" of quantum chemistry for its accuracy, usually can treat molecules with 20-30 atoms. To extend the reach of accurate correlated electronic structure methods to larger molecular systems, we work towards two directions: parallel computing and reduced-cost/scaling approaches. Parallel computing can utilize more computational resources to handle systems that demand more substantial computational efforts. Reduced-cost/scaling approaches, which introduce approximations to the existing electronic structure methods, can significantly reduce the amount of computation and storage requirements. In this work, we introduce a new distributed-memory massively parallel implementation of standard and explicitly correlated (F12) coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) with canonical bigO{N^6} computational complexity ( C. Peng, J. A. Calvin, F. Pavov{s}evi'c, J. Zhang, and E. F. Valeev, textit{J. Phys. Chem. A} 2016, textbf{120}, 10231.), based on the TiledArray tensor framework. Excellent strong scaling is demonstrated on a multi-core shared-memory computer, a commodity distributed-memory computer, and a national-scale supercomputer. We also present a distributed-memory implementation of the density-fitting (DF) based CCSD(T) method. (C. Peng, J. A. Calvin, and E. F. Valeev, textit{in preparation for submission}) An improved parallel DF-CCSD is presented utilizing lazy evaluation for tensors with more than two unoccupied indices, which makes the DF-CCSD storage requirements always smaller than those of the non-iterative triples correction (T). Excellent strong scaling is observed on both shared-memory and distributed-memory computers equipped with conventional Intel Xeon processors and the Intel Xeon Phi (Knights Landing) processors. With the new implementation, the CCSD(T) energies can be evaluated for systems containing 200 electrons and 1000 basis functions in a few days using a small size commodity cluster, with even more massive computations possible on leadership-class computing resources. The inclusion of F12 correction to the CCSD(T) method makes it converge to basis set limit much more rapidly. The large-scale parallel explicitly correlated coupled-cluster program makes the accurate estimation of the coupled-cluster basis set limit for molecules with 20 or more atoms a routine. Thus, it can be used rigorously to test the emerging reduced-scaling coupled-cluster approaches. Moreover, we extend the pair natural orbital (PNO) approach to excited states through the equation-of-motion coupled cluster singles and doubles (EOM-CCSD) method. (C. Peng, M. C. Clement, and E. F. Valeev, textit{submitted}) We simulate the PNO-EOM-CCSD method using an existing massively parallel canonical EOM-CCSD program. We propose the use of state-averaged PNOs, which are generated from the average of the pair density of excited states, to span the PNO space of all the excited states. The doubles amplitudes in the CIS(D) method are used to compute the state-averaged pair density of excited states. The issue of incorrect states in the state-averaged pair density, caused by an energy reordering of excited states between the CIS(D) and EOM-CCSD, is resolved by simply computing more states than desired. We find that with a truncation threshold of 10−7, the truncation error for the excitation energy is already below 0.02 eV for the systems tested, while the average number of PNOs is reduced to 50-70 per pair. The accuracy of the PNO-EOM-CCSD method on local, Rydberg and charge transfer states is also investigated.
Achieving materials-specific predictions for large, realistic molecules and solids with strong electron correlations remains a long-standing challenge in quantum chemistry. This dissertation develops scalable ab initio quantum many-body methods for crystalline materials, demonstrating that rigorous optimization of theoretical approximations and numerical algorithms enables predictive computation even in strongly correlated systems. The work tackles three interconnected challenges, namely describing material-specific properties of strongly correlated superconductors, achieving linear scaling with k-points for large-scale periodic calculations, and establishing reliable methods for electron-phonon interactions. The following chapters address each challenge in turn. Chapter 2 demonstrates that ab initio density matrix embedding theory, combined with symmetry-breaking strategies for superconducting order parameters, reproduces experimental trends in cuprate superconductivity, including pressure and layer effects on transition temperatures. By directly solving the electronic Schrödinger equation from material structures, these calculations capture multi-orbital covalency effects that simplified model Hamiltonians neglect, revealing their essential role in the spin fluctuations driving pairing. This predictive capability establishes a foundation for efficient computational screening of superconducting materials. Extending these calculations to larger k-point meshes and broader phase diagram explorations, however, demands more efficient computational algorithms. To overcome this computational bottleneck, Chapter 3 introduces interpolative separable density fitting framework. This development enables thermodynamic limit calculations with up to 1000 k-points, as validated on diamond, carbon dioxide, nickel monoxide, and cuprate systems. Integration with density matrix embedding theory and local natural orbital methods further yields converged ground-state energies from accurate correlated wavefunction methods such as CCSD(T) for crystalline materials in the thermodynamic limit. With computational efficiency established, the remaining challenge lies in extending the theoretical framework beyond purely electronic degrees of freedom. Chapter 4 addresses this need by establishing exponential ansatz wavefunctions as competitive approaches for electron-phonon systems. Unlike previous treatments based on perturbation theory, systematic benchmarking of coupled cluster theory and variational Lang-Firsov methods on the Holstein model demonstrates, for the first time, that these approaches accurately describe polaron formation across coupling regimes when combined with appropriate reference state optimization. These results provide a foundation for incorporating phonon effects into ab initio studies of superconducting materials. In addition to these methodological advances, GPU acceleration and MPI parallelization enhance computational throughput, enabling efficient large-scale calculations. Together, these developments constitute a computational framework for predictive ab initio quantum many-body calculations in crystalline materials, opening new avenues for understanding and designing strongly correlated quantum materials.