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Register a new userAccurate Electron Affinities and Orbital Energies of Anions from a Non-Empirically Tuned Range-Separated Density Functional Theory Approach
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The treatment of atomic anions with Kohn-Sham density functional theory (DFT) has long been controversial since the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy, $E_{HOMO}$, is often calculated to be positive with most approximate density functionals. We assess the accuracy of orbital energies and electron affinities for all three rows of elements in the periodic table (H-Ar) using a variety of theoretical approaches and customized basis sets. Among all of the theoretical methods studied here, we find that a non-empirically tuned range-separated approach (constructed to satisfy DFT-Koopmans theorem for the anionic electron system) provides the best accuracy for a variety of basis sets - even for small basis sets where most functionals typically fail. Previous approaches to solve this conundrum of positive $E_{HOMO}$ values have utilized non-self-consistent methods; however electronic properties, such as electronic couplings/gradients (which require a self-consistent potential and energy), become ill-defined with these approaches. In contrast, the non-empirically tuned range-separated procedure used here yields well-defined electronic couplings/gradients and correct $E_{HOMO}$ values since both the potential and resulting electronic energy are computed self-consistently. Orbital energies and electron affinities are further analyzed in the context of the electronic energy as a function of electronic number (including fractional numbers of electrons) to provide a stringent assessment of self-interaction errors for these complex anion systems.
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We present a rigorous framework that combines single-particle Greens function theory with density functional theory based on a separation of electron-electron interactions into short-range and long-range components. Short-range contributions to the total energy and exchange-correlation potential are provided by a density functional approximation, while the long-range contribution is calculated using an explicit many-body Greens function method. Such a hybrid results in a nonlocal, dynamic, and orbital-dependent exchange-correlation functional of a single-particle Greens function. In particular, we present a range-separated hybrid functional called srSVWN5-lrGF2 which combines the local-density approximation and the second-order Greens function theory. We illustrate that similarly to density functional approximations the new functional is weakly basis-set dependent. Furthermore, it offers an improved description of the short-range dynamical correlation. The many-body contribution to the functional allows us to mitigate the many-electron self-interaction error present in most of density functional approximations and provides a better description of molecular properties. Additionally, the new functional can be used to scale down the self-energy and, therefore, introduce an additional sparsity to the self-energy matrix that in the future can be exploited in calculations for large molecules or periodic systems.
A range-separated double-hybrid (RSDH) scheme which generalizes the usual range-separated hybrids and double hybrids is developed. This scheme consistently uses a two-parameter Coulomb-attenuating-method (CAM)-like decomposition of the electron-electron interaction for both exchange and correlation in order to combine Hartree-Fock exchange and second-order M{{o}}ller-Plesset (MP2) correlation with a density functional. The RSDH scheme relies on an exact theory which is presented in some detail. Several semi-local approximations are developed for the short-range exchange-correlation density functional involved in this scheme. After finding optimal values for the two parameters of the CAM-like decomposition, the RSDH scheme is shown to have a relatively small basis dependence and to provide atomization energies, reaction barrier heights, and weak intermolecular interactions globally more accurate or comparable to range-separated MP2 or standard MP2. The RSDH scheme represents a new family of double hybrids with minimal empiricism which could be useful for general chemical applications.
We introduce an approximation to the short-range correlation energy functional with multide-terminantal reference involved in a variant of range-separated density-functional theory. This approximation is a local functional of the density, the density gradient, and the on-top pair density, which locally interpolates between the standard Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof correlation functional at vanishing range-separation parameter and the known exact asymptotic expansion at large range-separation parameter. When combined with (selected) configuration-interaction calculations for the long-range wave function, this approximation gives accurate dissociation energy curves of the H2, Li2, and Be2 molecules, and thus appears as a promising way to accurately account for static correlation in range-separated density-functional theory.
We investigate the performance of the range-separated hybrid (RSH) scheme, which combines long-range Hartree-Fock (HF) and a short-range density-functional approximation (DFA), for calculating photoexcitation/photoionization spectra of the H and He atoms, using a B-spline basis set in order to correctly describe the continuum part of the spectra. The study of these simple systems allows us to quantify the influence on the spectra of the errors coming from the short-range exchange-correlation DFA and from the missing long-range correlation in the RSH scheme. We study the differences between using the long-range HF exchange (nonlocal) potential and the long-range exact exchange (local) potential. Contrary to the former, the latter supports a series of Rydberg states and gives reasonable photoexcitation/photoionization spectra, even without applying linear-response theory. The most accurate spectra are obtained with the linear-response time-dependent range-separated hybrid (TDRSH) scheme. In particular, for the He atom at the optimal value of the range-separation parameter, TDRSH gives slightly more accurate photoexcitation and photoioniza-tion spectra than standard linear-response time-dependent HF. More generally, the present work shows the potential of range-separated density-functional theory for calculating linear and nonlinear optical properties involving continuum states.
Standard flavors of density-functional theory (DFT) calculations are known to fail in describing anions, due to large self-interaction errors. The problem may be circumvented by using localized basis sets of reduced size, leaving no variational flexibility for the extra electron to delocalize. Alternatively, a recent approach exploiting DFT evaluations of total energies on electronic densities optimized at the Hartree-Fock (HF) level has been reported, showing that the self-interaction-free HF densities are able to lead to an improved description of the additional electron, returning affinities in close agreement with the experiments. Nonetheless, such an approach can fail when the HF densities are too inaccurate. Here, an alternative approach is presented, in which an embedding environment is used to stabilize the anion in a bound configuration. Similarly to the HF case, when computing total energies at the DFT level on these corrected densities, electron affinities in very good agreement with experiments can be recovered. The effect of the environment can be evaluated and removed by an extrapolation of the results to the limit of vanishing embedding. Moreover, the approach can be easily applied to DFT calculations with delocalized basis sets, e.g. plane-waves, for which alternative approaches are either not viable or more computationally demanding. The proposed extrapolation strategy can be thus applied also to extended systems, as often studied in condensed-matter physics and materials science, and we illustrate how the embedding environment can be exploited to determine the energy of an adsorbing anion - here a chloride ion on a metal surface - whose charge configuration would be incorrectly predicted by standard density functionals.
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