The effect of self-interaction error on electrostatic dipoles calculated using density functional theory

The rise and fall of stretched bond errors: Extending the analysis of Perdew-Zunger self-interaction corrections of reaction barrier heights beyond the LSDA

Incorporating self-interaction corrections (SIC) significantly improves chemical reaction barrier height predictions made using density functional theory methods. We present a detailed orbital-by-orbital analysis of these corrections for three semi-local density functional approximations (DFAs) situated on the three lowest rungs of Jacob's ladder of approximations. The analysis is based on Fermi-Löwdin Orbital Self-Interaction Correction (FLOSIC) calculations performed at several steps along the reaction pathway from the reactants (R) to the transition state (TS) to the products (P) for four representative reactions selected from the BH76 benchmark set. For all three functionals, the major contribution to self-interaction corrections of the barrier heights can be traced to stretched bond orbitals that develop near the TS configuration. The magnitude of the ratio of the self-exchange-correlation energy to the self-Hartree energy (XC/H) for a given orbital is introduced as an indicator of one-electron self-interaction error. XC/H = 1.0 implies that an orbital's self-exchange-correlation energy exactly cancels its self-Hartree energy and that the orbital, therefore, makes no contribution to the SIC in the FLOSIC scheme. For the practical DFAs studied here, XC/H spans a range of values. The largest values are obtained for stretched or strongly lobed orbitals. We show that significant differences in XC/H for corresponding orbitals in the R, TS, and P configurations can be used to identify the major contributors to the SIC of barrier heights and reaction energies. Based on such comparisons, we suggest that barrier height predictions made using the strongly constrained and appropriately normed meta-generalized gradient approximation may have attained the best accuracy possible for a semi-local functional using the Perdew-Zunger SIC approach.

Orbital dependent complications for close vs well-separated electrons in diradicals

We investigate two limits in open-shell diradical systems: O3, in which the interesting orbitals are in close proximity to one another, and (C21H13)2, where there is a significant spatial separation between the two orbitals. In accord with earlier calculations, we find that standard density-functional approximations do not predict the open-shell character for the former case but uniformly predict the open-shell character for the latter case. We trace the qualitatively incorrect behavior in O3 predicted by these standard density functional approximations to self-interaction error and use the Fermi-Löwdin-orbital-self-interaction-corrected formalism to determine accurate triplet, closed-shell singlet, and open-shell broken-spin-symmetry electronic configurations. Analysis of the resulting many-electron overlap matrices allows us to unambiguously show that the broken-spin-symmetry configurations do not participate in the representation of the Ms = 0 triplet states and allows us to reliably extract the singlet-triplet splitting in O3 by analyzing the energy as a function of Fermi-orbital-descriptor permutations. The results of these analyses predict the percentage of open-shell character in O3, which agrees well with conventional wavefunction-based methods. While these techniques are expected to be required in cases near the Coulson-Fischer point, we find that they will be less necessary in diradical systems with well-separated electrons, such as (C21H13)2. Results based on energies from self-interaction-corrected generalized gradient, local density, and Hartree-Fock approximations and experimental results are in generally good agreement for O3. These results help form the basis for deriving extended Heisenberg-like Hamiltonians that are needed for descriptions of molecular magnets when there are competing low-energy electronic configurations.

Downward quantum learning from element 118: Automated generation of Fermi-Löwdin orbitals for all atoms

A new algorithm based on a rigorous theorem and quantum data computationally mined from element 118 guarantees automated construction of initial Fermi-Löwdin-Orbital (FLO) starting points for all elements in the Periodic Table. It defines a means for constructing a small library of scalable FLOs for universal use in molecular and solid-state calculations. The method can be systematically improved for greater efficiency and for applications to excited states such as x-ray excitations and optically silent excitations. FLOs were introduced to recast the Perdew-Zunger self-interaction correction (PZSIC) into an explicit unitarily invariant form. The FLOs are generated from a set of N quasi-classical electron positions, referred to as Fermi-Orbital descriptors (FODs), and a set of N-orthonormal single-electron orbitals. FOD positions, when optimized, minimize the PZSIC total energy. However, creating sets of starting FODs that lead to a positive definite Fermi orbital overlap matrix has proven to be challenging for systems composed of open-shell atoms and ions. The proof herein guarantees the existence of a FLOSIC solution and further guarantees that if a solution for N electrons is found, it can be used to generate a minimum of N - 1 and a maximum of 2^N - 2 initial starting points for systems composed of a smaller number of electrons. Applications to heavy and super-heavy atoms are presented. All starting solutions reported here were obtained from a solution for element 118, Oganesson.

Self-consistent implementation of locally scaled self-interaction-correction method

Recently proposed local self-interaction correction (LSIC) method [Zope et al., J. Chem. Phys. 151, 214108 (2019)] is a one-electron self-interaction-correction (SIC) method that uses an iso-orbital indicator to apply the SIC at each point in space by scaling the exchange-correlation and Coulomb energy densities. The LSIC method is exact for the one-electron densities, also recovers the uniform electron gas limit of the uncorrected density functional approximation, and reduces to the well-known Perdew-Zunger SIC (PZSIC) method as a special case. This article presents the self-consistent implementation of the LSIC method using the ratio of Weizsäcker and Kohn-Sham kinetic energy densities as an iso-orbital indicator. The atomic forces as well as the forces on the Fermi-Löwdin orbitals are also implemented for the LSIC energy functional. Results show that LSIC with the simplest local spin density functional predicts atomization energies of the AE6 dataset better than some of the most widely used generalized-gradient-approximation (GGA) functional [e.g., Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE)] and barrier heights of the BH6 database better than some of the most widely used hybrid functionals (e.g., PBE0 and B3LYP). The LSIC method [a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.008 Å] predicts bond lengths of a small set of molecules better than the PZSIC-LSDA (MAE 0.042 Å) and LSDA (0.011 Å). This work shows that accurate results can be obtained from the simplest density functional by removing the self-interaction-errors using an appropriately designed SIC method.

The performance of CCSD(T) for the calculation of dipole moments in diatomics

This work analyzes the accuracy of the coupled cluster with single, double, and perturbative triple excitation [CCSD(T)] method for predicting dipole moments. In particular, we benchmark CCSD(T) predictions for the equilibrium bond length, vibrational frequency, and dipole moment versus accurate experimental data. As a result, we find that CCSD(T) leads to accurate dipole moments. However, in some cases, it disagrees with the experimental values, and the disagreement can not be satisfactorily explained via relativistic or multi-reference effects. Therefore, our results indicate that benchmark studies for energy and geometry properties do not accurately describe other electron density magnitudes.

Density Matrix Implementation of the Fermi-Löwdin Orbital Self-Interaction Correction Method

The Fermi-Löwdin orbital self-interaction correction (FLOSIC) method effectively provides a transformation from canonical orbitals to localized Fermi-Löwdin orbitals which are used to remove the self-interaction error in the Perdew-Zunger (PZ) framework. This transformation is solely determined by a set of points in space, called Fermi-Löwdin descriptors (FODs), and the occupied canonical orbitals or the density matrix. In this work, we provide a detailed workflow for the implementation of the FLOSIC method for removal of self-interaction error in DFT calculations in an orbital-by-orbital basis that takes advantage of the unitary invariant nature of the FLOSIC method. In this way, it is possible to cast the self-consistent energy minimization at fixed FODs in the same manner than standard Kohn-Sham with one additional term in the Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian that introduces the PZ self-interaction correction. Each energy minimization iteration is divided in two substeps, one for the density matrix and one for the FODs. Expressions for the effective Kohn-Sham matrix and FOD gradients are provided such that its implementation is suitable for most electronic structure codes. We analyze the convergence characteristics of the algorithm and present applications for the evaluation of NMR shielding constants and real-time time-dependent DFT simulations based on the Liouville-von Neumann equation to calculate excitation energies.

Fermi–Löwdin orbital self-interaction correction of adsorption energies on transition metal ions

Density functional theory (DFT)-based descriptions of the adsorption of small molecules on transition metal ions are prone to self-interaction errors. Here, we show that such errors lead to a large over-estimation of adsorption energies of small molecules on Cu+, Zn+, Zn2+, and Mn+ in local spin density approximation (LSDA) and Perdew, Burke, Ernzerhof (PBE) generalized gradient approximation calculations compared to reference values computed using the coupled-cluster with single, doubles, and perturbative triple excitations method. These errors are significantly reduced by removing self-interaction using the Perdew–Zunger self-interaction correction (PZ-SIC) in the Fermi–Löwdin Orbital (FLO) SIC framework. In the case of FLO-PBE, typical errors are reduced to less than 0.1 eV. Analysis of the results using DFT energies evaluated on self-interaction-corrected densities [DFT(@FLO)] indicates that the density-driven contributions to the FLO-DFT adsorption energy corrections are roughly the same size in DFT = LSDA and PBE, but the total corrections due to removing self-interaction are larger in LSDA.

Study of Self-Interaction Errors in Density Functional Calculations of Magnetic Exchange Coupling Constants Using Three Self-Interaction Correction Methods

We examine the role of self-interaction error (SIE) removal on the evaluation of magnetic exchange coupling constants. In particular, we analyze the effect of scaling down the self-interaction correction (SIC) for three nonempirical density functional approximations (DFAs) namely, the local spin density approximation, the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof generalized gradient approximation, and the recent SCAN family of meta-GGA functionals. To this end, we employ three one-electron SIC methods: Perdew-Zunger SIC [Perdew, J. P.; Zunger, A. Phys. Rev. B, 1981, 23, 5048.], the orbitalwise scaled SIC method [Vydrov, O. A. et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2006, 124, 094108.], and the recent local scaling method [Zope, R. R. et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2019, 151, 214108.]. We compute the magnetic exchange coupling constants using the spin projection and nonprojection approaches for sets of molecules composed of dinuclear and polynuclear H···He models, organic radical molecules, and chlorocuprate and compare these results against accurate theories and experiment. Our results show that for the systems that mainly consist of single-electron regions, PZSIC performs well, but for more complex organic systems and the chlorocuprates, an overcorrecting tendency of PZSIC combined with the DFAs utilized in this work is more pronounced, and in such cases, LSIC with kinetic energy density ratio performs better than PZSIC. Analysis of the results in terms of SIC corrections to the density and to the total energy shows that both density and energy correction are required to obtain an improved prediction of magnetic exchange couplings.

How well do self-interaction corrections repair the overestimation of static polarizabilities in density functional calculations?

We examine the effect of removing self-interaction error (SIE) on the calculation of molecular polarizabilities in the local spin density (LSDA) and generalized gradient approximations (GGA). To this end, we utilize a database of 132 molecules taken from a recent benchmark study [Hait and Head-Gordon, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2018, 20, 19800] to assess the influence of SIE on polarizabilities by comparing results with accurate reference data. Our results confirm that the general overestimation of molecular polarizabilities by these density functional approximations can be attributed to SIE. However, removing SIE using the Perdew-Zunger self-interaction-correction (PZ-SIC) method, implemented using the Fermi-Löwdin Orbital SIC approach, leads to an underestimation of molecular polarizabilities, showing that PZ-SIC overcorrects when combined with LSDA or GGA. Application of a recently proposed locally scaled SIC [Zope, et al., J. Chem. Phys., 2019, 151, 214108] is found to provide more accurate polarizabilities. We attribute this to the ability of the local scaling scheme to selectively correct for SIE in the regions of space where the correction is needed most.

Electronic structure of mononuclear Cu-based molecule from density-functional theory with self-interaction correction

We investigate the electronic structure of a planar mononuclear Cu-based molecule [Cu(C₆H₄S₂)₂]^z in two oxidation states (z = -2, -1) using density-functional theory (DFT) with Fermi-Löwdin orbital (FLO) self-interaction correction (SIC). The dianionic Cu-based molecule was proposed to be a promising qubit candidate. Self-interaction error within approximate DFT functionals renders severe delocalization of electron and spin densities arising from 3d orbitals. The FLO-SIC method relies on optimization of Fermi-Löwdin orbital descriptors (FODs) with which localized occupied orbitals are constructed to create SIC potentials. Starting with many initial sets of FODs, we employ a frozen-density loop algorithm within the FLO-SIC method to study the Cu-based molecule. We find that the electronic structure of the molecule remains unchanged despite somewhat different final FOD configurations. In the dianionic state (spin S = 1/2), FLO-SIC spin density originates from the Cu d and S p orbitals with an approximate ratio of 2:1, in quantitative agreement with multireference calculations, while in the case of SIC-free DFT, the orbital ratio is reversed. Overall, FLO-SIC lowers the energies of the occupied orbitals and, in particular, the 3d orbitals unhybridized with the ligands significantly, which substantially increases the energy gap between the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) compared to SIC-free DFT results. The FLO-SIC HOMO-LUMO gap of the dianionic state is larger than that of the monoanionic state, which is consistent with experiment. Our results suggest a positive outlook of the FLO-SIC method in the description of magnetic exchange coupling within 3d-element-based systems.

Local self-interaction correction method with a simple scaling factor

The local self-interaction correction method with a simple scaling factor performs better than the Perdew-Zunger self-interaction correction method and also provides a good description of the binding energies of weakly bonded water clusters. 

Assessing the effect of regularization on the molecular properties predicted by SCAN and self-interaction corrected SCAN meta-GGA

Recent regularization of the SCAN meta-GGA functional (rSCAN) has simplified the numerical complexities of the SCAN functional, alleviating SCAN's stringent demand on the numerical integration grids to some extent. The regularization of rSCAN, however, results in the breaking of some constraints such as the uniform electron gas limit, the slowly varying density limit, and coordinate scaling of the iso-orbital indicator. Here, we assess the effects of regularization on the electronic, structural, vibrational, and magnetic properties of molecules by comparing the SCAN and rSCAN predictions. The properties studied include atomic energies, atomization energies, ionization potentials, electron affinities, barrier heights, infrared intensities, dissociation and reaction energies, spin moments of molecular magnets, and isomer ordering of water clusters. Our results show that rSCAN requires less dense numerical grids and gives very similar results to those of SCAN for all properties examined with the exception of atomization energies, which are worsened in rSCAN. We also examine the performance of self-interaction-corrected (SIC) rSCAN with respect to SIC-SCAN using the Perdew-Zunger (PZ) SIC method. The PZSIC method uses orbital densities to compute one-electron self-interaction errors and places an even more stringent demand on numerical grids. Our results show that SIC-rSCAN gives marginally better performance than SIC-SCAN for almost all properties studied in this work with numerical grids that are on average half or less as dense as that needed for SIC-SCAN.

Self-interaction error overbinds water clusters but cancels in structural energy differences

We gauge the importance of self-interaction errors in density functional approximations (DFAs) for the case of water clusters. To this end, we used the Fermi-Löwdin orbital self-interaction correction method (FLOSIC) to calculate the binding energy of clusters of up to eight water molecules. Three representative DFAs of the local, generalized gradient, and metageneralized gradient families [i.e., local density approximation (LDA), Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE), and strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN)] were used. We find that the overbinding of the water clusters in these approximations is not a density-driven error. We show that, while removing self-interaction error does not alter the energetic ordering of the different water isomers with respect to the uncorrected DFAs, the resulting binding energies are corrected toward accurate reference values from higher-level calculations. In particular, self-interaction-corrected SCAN not only retains the correct energetic ordering for water hexamers but also reduces the mean error in the hexamer binding energies to less than 14 meV/[Formula: see text] from about 42 meV/[Formula: see text] for SCAN. By decomposing the total binding energy into many-body components, we find that large errors in the two-body interaction in SCAN are significantly reduced by self-interaction corrections. Higher-order many-body errors are small in both SCAN and self-interaction-corrected SCAN. These results indicate that orbital-by-orbital removal of self-interaction combined with a proper DFA can lead to improved descriptions of water complexes.

Importance of self-interaction-error removal in density functional calculations on water cluster anions

Removing self-interaction errors in density functional approximations results in significantly improved vertical detachment energies of water anions and is essential for obtaining orbital energies consistent with electron binding energies.