No Arabic abstract
The idea of using fragment embedding to circumvent the high computational scaling of accurate electronic structure methods while retaining high accuracy has been a long-standing goal for quantum chemists. Traditional fragment embedding methods mainly focus on systems composed of weakly correlated parts and are insufficient when division across chemical bonds is unavoidable. Recently, density matrix embedding theory (DMET) and other methods based on the Schmidt decomposition have emerged as a fresh approach to this problem. Despite their success on model systems, these methods can prove difficult for realistic systems because they rely on either a rigid, non-overlapping partition of the system or a specification of some special sites (i.e. `edge and `center sites), neither of which is well-defined in general for real molecules. In this work, we present a new Schmidt decomposition-based embedding scheme called Incremental Embedding that allows the combination of arbitrary overlapping fragments without the knowledge of edge sites. This method forms a convergent hierarchy in the sense that higher accuracy can be obtained by using fragments involving more sites. The computational scaling for the first few levels is lower than that of most correlated wave function methods. We present results for several small molecules in atom-centered Gaussian basis sets and demonstrate that Incremental Embedding converges quickly with fragment size and recovers most static correlation in small basis sets even when truncated at the second lowest level.
We introduce Extended Density Matrix Embedding Theory (EDMET), a static quantum embedding theory explicitly self-consistent with respect to two-body environmental interactions. This overcomes the biggest practical and conceptual limitation of more traditional one-body embedding methods, namely the lack of screening and treatment of long-range correlations. This algebraic zero-temperature embedding augments the correlated cluster with a minimal number of bosons from the random phase approximation, and admits an analytic approach to build a self-consistent Coulomb-exchange-correlation kernel. For extended Hubbard models with non-local interactions, this leads to the accurate description of phase transitions, static quantities and dynamics. We also move towards {em ab initio} systems via the Parriser--Parr--Pople model of conjugated coronene derivatives, finding good agreement with experimental optical gaps.
Recently a novel approach to find approximate exchange-correlation functionals in density-functional theory (DFT) was presented (U. Mordovina et. al., JCTC 15, 5209 (2019)), which relies on approximations to the interacting wave function using density-matrix embedding theory (DMET). This approximate interacting wave function is constructed by using a projection determined by an iterative procedure that makes parts of the reduced density matrix of an auxiliary system the same as the approximate interacting density matrix. If only the diagonal of both systems are connected this leads to an approximation of the interacting-to-non-interacting mapping of the Kohn-Sham approach to DFT. Yet other choices are possible and allow to connect DMET with other DFTs such as kinetic-energy DFT or reduced density-matrix functional theory. In this work we give a detailed review of the basics of the DMET procedure from a DFT perspective and show how both approaches can be used to supplement each other. We do so explicitly for the case of a one-dimensional lattice system, as this is the simplest setting where we can apply DMET and the one that was originally presented. Among others we highlight how the mappings of DFTs can be used to identify uniquely defined auxiliary systems and auxiliary projections in DMET and how to construct approximations for different DFTs using DMET inspired projections. Such alternative approximation strategies become especially important for DFTs that are based on non-linearly coupled observables such as kinetic-energy DFT, where the Kohn-Sham fields are no longer simply obtainable by functional differentiation of an energy expression, or for reduced density-matrix functional theories, where a straightforward Kohn-Sham construction is not feasible.
We present the first implementation of a density matrix renormalization group algorithm embedded in an environment described by density functional theory. The frozen density embedding scheme is used with a freeze-and-thaw strategy for a self-consistent polarization of the orbital-optimized wavefunction and the environmental densities with respect to each other.
The accuracy of charge-transfer excitation energies, solvatochromic shifts and other environmental effects calculated via various density embedding techniques depend critically on the approximations employed for the non-additive non-interacting kinetic energy functional, $T_{scriptscriptstylerm s}^{scriptscriptstylerm nad}[n]$. Approximating this functional remains an important challenge in electronic structure theory. To assist in the development and testing of approximations for $T_{scriptscriptstylerm s}^{scriptscriptstylerm nad}[n]$, we derive two virial relations for fragments in molecules. These establish separate connections between the non-additive kinetic energies of the non-interacting and interacting systems of electrons, and quantities such as the electron-nuclear attraction forces, the partition (or embedding) energy and potential, and the Kohn-Sham potentials of the system and its parts. We numerically verify both relations on diatomic molecules.
Quantum embedding based on the (one-electron reduced) density matrix is revisited by means of the unitary Householder transformation. While being exact and equivalent to (but formally simpler than) density matrix embedding theory (DMET) in the non-interacting case, the resulting Householder transformed density matrix functional embedding theory (Ht-DMFET) preserves, by construction, the single-particle character of the bath when electron correlation is introduced. In Ht-DMFET, the projected impurity+bath clusters Hamiltonian (from which approximate local properties of the interacting lattice can be extracted) becomes an explicit functional of the density matrix. In the spirit of single-impurity DMET, we consider in this work a closed (two-electron) cluster constructed from the full-size non-interacting density matrix. When the (Householder transformed) interaction on the bath site is taken into account, per-site energies obtained for the half-filled one-dimensional Hubbard lattice match almost perfectly the exact Bethe Ansatz results in all correlation regimes. In the strongly correlated regime, the results deteriorate away from half-filling. This can be related to the electron number fluctuations in the (two-site) cluster which are not described neither in Ht-DMFET nor in regular DMET. As expected, the per-site energies dramatically improve when increasing the number of embedded impurities. Formal connections with density/density matrix functional theories have been briefly discussed and should be explored further. Work is currently in progress in this direction.