Model protein excited states: MRCI calculations with large active spaces vs CC2 method
Date
2021-06-02
Authors
Brenner, Valérie
Véry, Thibaut
Schmidt, Michael W.
Gordon, Mark S.
Hoyau, Sophie
Ben Amor, Nadia
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AIP Publishing LLC
Abstract
Benchmarking calculations on excited states of models of phenylalanine protein chains are presented to assess the ability of alternative methods to the standard and most commonly used multiconfigurational wave function-based method, the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF), in recovering the non-dynamical correlation for systems that become not affordable by the CASSCF. The exploration of larger active spaces beyond the CASSCF limit is benchmarked through three strategies based on the reduction in the number of determinants: the restricted active space self-consistent field, the generalized active space self-consistent field (GASSCF), and the occupation-restricted multiple active space (ORMAS) schemes. The remaining dynamic correlation effects are then added by the complete active space second-order perturbation theory and by the multireference difference dedicated configuration interaction methods. In parallel, the approximate second-order coupled cluster (CC2), already proven to be successful for small building blocks of model proteins in one of our previous works [Ben Amor et al., J. Chem. Phys. 148, 184105 (2018)], is investigated to assess its performances for larger systems. Among the different alternative strategies to CASSCF, our results highlight the greatest efficiency of the GASSCF and ORMAS schemes in the systematic reduction of the configuration interaction expansion without loss of accuracy in both nature and excitation energies of both singlet ππ* and nπ*CO excited states with respect to the equivalent CASSCF calculations. Guidelines for an optimum applicability of this scheme to systems requiring active spaces beyond the complete active space limit are then proposed. Finally, the extension of the CC2 method to such large systems without loss of accuracy is demonstrated, highlighting the great potential of this method to treat accurately excited states, mainly single reference, of very large systems.
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This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Brenner, Valérie, Thibaut Véry, Michael W. Schmidt, Mark S. Gordon, Sophie Hoyau, and Nadia Ben Amor. "Model protein excited states: MRCI calculations with large active spaces vs CC2 method." The Journal of Chemical Physics 154, no. 21 (2021): 214105, and may be found at DOI: 10.1063/5.0048146. Copyright 2021 The Author(s). Posted with permission.