Q-Chem 5.1 User’s Manual

13.17 The ALMO-CIS and ALMO-CIS+CT methods

13.17.1 Theory

The ALMO-CIS[Closser et al.(2015)Closser, Ge, Mao, Shao, and Head-Gordon] and ALMO-CIS+CT[Ge et al.(2017)Ge, Mao, White, Epifanovsky, Closser, and Head-Gordon] methods are local variants of configuration interaction singles (CIS), and are formulated through the use of absolutely localized molecular orbitals (ALMOs). They share the same spirit with the TDDFT(MI) method (Section 13.16), but were originally designed to target large numbers of excited states in atomic/molecular clusters, such as the entire $n=2$ band in helium clusters that contain hundreds of atoms.

In ALMO-CIS and ALMO-CIS+CT, we solve a truncated non-orthogonal CIS eigen-equation:

  \begin{equation} \label{eq:almo-cis} A_{ia,jb}t^{jb} = \omega S_{ia,jb}t^{jb} \end{equation}   (13.48)

The use of ALMOs allows associating each MO index ($i$, $a$, $j$ or $b$) to a fragment. In ALMO-CIS, approximation is made such that only the amplitudes corresponding to intrafragment transitions are non-zero, i.e., $t^{jb}=0$ if the occupied orbital $j$ and the virtual orbital $b$ reside on two different fragments. The Hamiltonian and overlap matrix are also truncated, with $i$ ($j$) and $a$ ($b$) belonging to the same fragment. This approximation excludes interfragment charge transfer (CT) excitations entirely and sometimes may lead to insufficient accuracy. In ALMO-CIS+CT, the CT effect is reintroduced by setting a distance cutoff $r_{\mathrm{cut}}$, so that transitions between neighboring fragments within a distance smaller than $r_{\mathrm{cut}}$ are allowed ($i$ ($j$) and $a$ ($b$) belonging to such a pair of fragments are also included in the eigen-equation). In both ALMO-CIS and ALMO-CIS+CT, dimension of the eigenvalue problem scales linearly with respect to system size, instead of having a quadratic scaling as in standard CIS. Because of the reduction of matrix size, it is computationally feasible to explicitly build the Hamiltonian and diagonalize it to get a full band of eigenstates for relatively large systems, and the overall scaling of ALMO-CIS/ALMO-CIS+CT is cubic, in contrast with the sixth order scaling of standard CIS for a full-spectrum calculation.

Besides the full-spectrum calculations described above, use of the Davidson algorithm is also available for ALMO-CIS and ALMO-CIS+CT, which targets a few lowest excited states. This implementation, unlike the original full-spectrum version, also supports the local variants of TDDFT/TDA calculations that share the same working equation (eq. 13.48).

13.17.2 Job Control

In addition to the standard CIS job controls variables described in Section 7.2.8, there are several additional $rem variables to specify for an ALMO-CIS/ALMO-CIS+CT calculation.

LOCAL_CIS

Invoke ALMO-CIS/ALMO-CIS+CT.


TYPE:

INTEGER


DEFAULT:

0


OPTIONS:

0

Regular CIS

1

ALMO-CIS/ALMO-CIS+CT without RI(slow)

2

ALMO-CIS/ALMO-CIS+CT with RI


RECOMMENDATION:

2 if ALMO-CIS is desired.


NN_THRESH

The distance cutoff for neighboring fragments (between which CT is enabled).


TYPE:

INTEGER


DEFAULT:

0


OPTIONS:

0

Do not include interfragment transitions (ALMO-CIS).

$n$

Include interfragment excitations between pairs of fragments the distances between whom

 

are smaller than $n$ Bohr (ALMO-CIS+CT).


RECOMMENDATION:

None


EIGSLV_METH

Control the method for solving the ALMO-CIS eigen-equation


TYPE:

INTEGER


DEFAULT:

0


OPTIONS:

0

Explicitly build the Hamiltonian then diagonalize (full-spectrum).

1

Use the Davidson method (currently only available for restricted cases).


RECOMMENDATION:

None


Example 13.340  ALMO-CIS+CT calculation ($r_{\mathrm{cut}} = 10$ a$_0$) for all the $n=2$ states of a helium dimer.

$molecule
0 1
--
   0 1
   He      2.8    0.     0.  
--
   0 1
   He      0.     0.     0.  
$end

$rem
   basis         gen 
   aux_basis     rimp2-cc-pvdz
   purecart      1111
   method        hf
   sym_ignore    true
   symmetry      false
   frgm_method   stoll
   cis_n_roots   8
   cis_triplets  false
   local_cis     2 ! use RI for ALMO-CIS  
   nn_thresh     10
$end

$rem_frgm
   cis_n_roots 0
$end

$basis
****
HE   0
S    3    1.000000
3.84216340D+01    2.37660000D-02
5.77803000D+00    1.54679000D-01
1.24177400D+00    4.69630000D-01
S    1    1.000000
2.97964000D-01    1.00000000D+00
SP   1    1.000000
4.80000000D-02    1.00000000D+00   1.00000000D+00
****
$end