High-order excitations in state-universal and state-specific multireference coupled cluster theories: Model systems

For the first time high-order excitations (n>2) have been studied in three multireference couple cluster (MRCC) theories built on the wave operator formalism: (1) the state-universal (SU) method of Jeziorski and Monkhorst (JM) (2) the state-specific Brillouin-Wigner (BW) coupled cluster method, and (3) the state-specific MRCC approach of Mukherjee (Mk). For the H4, P4, BeH2, and H8 models, multireference coupled cluster wave functions, with complete excitations ranging from doubles to hextuples, have been computed with a new arbitrary-order string-based code. Comparison is then made to corresponding single-reference coupled cluster and full configuration interaction (FCI) results. For the ground states the BW and Mk methods are found, in general, to provide more accurate results than the SU approach at all levels of truncation of the cluster operator. The inclusion of connected triple excitations reduces the nonparallelism error in singles and doubles MRCC energies by a factor of 2-10. In the BeH2 and H8 models, the inclusion of all quadruple excitations yields absolute energies within 1 kcal mol(-1) of the FCI limit. While the MRCC methods are very effective in multireference regions of the potential energy surfaces, they are outperformed by single-reference CC when one electronic configuration dominates. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.