A summary of the technical advances that are incorporated in the fourth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program is provided, covering approximately the last seven years. These include developments in density functional theory methods and algorithms, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) property evaluation, coupled cluster and perturbation theories, methods for electronically excited and openshell species, tools for treating extended environments, algorithms for walking on potential surfaces, analysis tools, energy and electron transfer modelling, parallel computing capabilities, and graphical user interfaces. In addition, a selection of example case studies that illustrate these capabilities is given. These include extensive benchmarks of the comparative accuracy of modern density functionals for bonded and non-bonded interactions, tests of attenuated second order Møller-Plesset (MP2) methods for intermolecular interactions, a variety of parallel performance benchmarks, and tests of the accuracy of implicit solvation models. Some specific chemical examples include calculations on the strongly correlated Cr 2 dimer, exploring zeolitecatalysed ethane dehydrogenation, energy decomposition analysis of a charged ter-molecular complex arising from glycerol photoionisation, and natural transition orbitals for a Frenkel exciton state in a nine-unit model of a self-assembling nanotube.Keywords quantum chemistry, software, electronic structure theory, density functional theory, electron correlation, computational modelling, Q-Chem Disciplines Chemistry CommentsThis article is from Molecular Physics: An International Journal at the Interface Between Chemistry and Physics 113 (2015): 184, doi:10.1080/00268976.2014. RightsWorks produced by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not copyrighted within the U.S. The content of this document is not copyrighted. Authors 185A summary of the technical advances that are incorporated in the fourth major release of the Q-CHEM quantum chemistry program is provided, covering approximately the last seven years. These include developments in density functional theory methods and algorithms, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) property evaluation, coupled cluster and perturbation theories, methods for electronically excited and open-shell species, tools for treating extended environments, algorithms for walking on potential surfaces, analysis tools, energy and electron transfer modelling, parallel computing capabilities, and graphical user interfaces. In addition, a selection of example case studies that illustrate these capabilities is given. These include extensive benchmarks of the comparative accuracy of modern density functionals for bonded and non-bonded interactions, tests of attenuated second order Møller-Plesset (MP2) methods for intermolecular interactions, a variety of parallel performance benchmarks, and tests of the accuracy of implicit solvation models. Some specific chemical examples include calculations on the strongly corre...

A variety of density matrix based methods for the analysis and visualization of electronic excitations are discussed and their implementation within the framework of the algebraic diagrammatic construction of the polarization propagator is reported. Their mathematical expressions are given and an extensive phenomenological discussion is provided to aid the interpretation of the results. Starting from several standard procedures, e.g., population analysis, natural orbital decomposition, and density plotting, we proceed to more advanced concepts of natural transition orbitals and attachment/detachment densities. In addition, special focus is laid on information coded in the transition density matrix and its phenomenological analysis in terms of an electron-hole picture. Taking advantage of both the orbital and real space representations of the density matrices, the physical information in these analysis methods is outlined, and similarities and differences between the approaches are highlighted. Moreover, new analysis tools for excited states are introduced including state averaged natural transition orbitals, which give a compact description of a number of states simultaneously, and natural difference orbitals (defined as the eigenvectors of the difference density matrix), which reveal details about orbital relaxation effects.

The algebraic diagrammatic construction (ADC) scheme for the polarization propagator provides a series of ab initio methods for the calculation of excited states based on perturbation theory. In recent years, the second-order ADC(2) scheme has attracted attention in the computational chemistry community because of its reliable accuracy and reasonable computational effort in the calculation of predominantly singly excited states. Owing to their size-consistency, ADC methods are suited for the investigation of large molecules. In addition, their Hermitian structure and the availability of the intermediate state representation (ISR) allow for straightforward computation of excited-state properties. Recently, an efficient implementation of ADC(3) has been reported, and its high accuracy for typical valence excited states of organic chromophores has been demonstrated. In this review, the origin of ADC-based excited-state methods in propagator theory is described, and an intuitive route for the derivation of algebraic expressions via the ISR is outlined and comparison to other excited-state methods is made. Existing computer codes and implemented ADC variants are reviewed, but most importantly the accuracy and limits of different ADC schemes are critically examined.

Electronic spectroscopy of toluene-rare-gas clusters: The external heavy atom effect and vibrational predissociationThe excited states of a diverse set of molecules are examined using a collection of newly implemented analysis methods. These examples expose the particular power of three of these tools: (i) natural difference orbitals (the eigenvectors of the difference density matrix) for the description of orbital relaxation effects, (ii) analysis of the one-electron transition density matrix in terms of an electronhole picture to identify charge resonance and excitonic correlation effects, and (iii) state-averaged natural transition orbitals for a compact simultaneous representation of several states. Furthermore, the utility of a wide array of additional analysis methods is highlighted. Five molecules with diverse excited state characteristics are chosen for these tasks: pyridine as a prototypical small heteroaromatic molecule, a model system of six neon atoms to study charge resonance effects, hexatriene in its neutral and radical cation forms to exemplify the cases of double excitations and spin-polarization, respectively, and a model iridium complex as a representative metal organic compound. Using these examples a number of phenomena, which are at first sight unexpected, are highlighted and their physical significance is discussed. Moreover, the generality of the conclusions of this paper is verified by a comparison of single-and multireference ab initio methods. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

The implementation of an efficient program of the algebraic diagrammatic construction method for the polarisation propagator in third-order perturbation theory (ADC(3)) for the computation of excited states is reported. The accuracies of ADC(2) and ADC(3) schemes have been investigated with respect to Thiel's recently established benchmark set for excitation energies and oscillator strengths. The calculation of 141 vertical excited singlet and 71 triplet states of 28 small to medium-sized organic molecules has revealed that ADC(3) exhibits mean error and standard deviation of 0.12 ± 0.28 eV for singlet states and -0.18 ± 0.16 eV for triplet states when the provided theoretical best estimates are used as benchmark. Accordingly, the ADC(2)-s and ADC(2)-x calculations revealed accuracies of 0.22 ± 0.38 eV and -0.70 ± 0.37 eV for singlets and 0.12 ± 0.16 eV and -0.55 ± 0.20 eV for triplets, respectively. For a comparison of CC3 and ADC(3), only non-CC3 benchmark values were considered, which comprise 84 singlet states and 19 triplet states. For these singlet states CC3 exhibits an accuracy of 0.23 ± 0.21 eV and ADC(3) an accuracy of 0.08 ± 0.27 eV, and accordingly for the triplet states of 0.12 ± 0.10 eV and -0.10 ± 0.13 eV, respectively. Hence, based on the quality of the existing benchmark set it is practically not possible to judge whether ADC(3) or CC3 is more accurate, however, ADC(3) has a much larger range of applicability due to its more favourable scaling of O(N(6)) with system size.