Dalton is a powerful general‐purpose program system for the study of molecular electronic structure at the Hartree–Fock, Kohn–Sham, multiconfigurational self‐consistent‐field, Møller–Plesset, configuration‐interaction, and coupled‐cluster levels of theory. Apart from the total energy, a wide variety of molecular properties may be calculated using these electronic‐structure models. Molecular gradients and Hessians are available for geometry optimizations, molecular dynamics, and vibrational studies, whereas magnetic resonance and optical activity can be studied in a gauge‐origin‐invariant manner. Frequency‐dependent molecular properties can be calculated using linear, quadratic, and cubic response theory. A large number of singlet and triplet perturbation operators are available for the study of one‐, two‐, and three‐photon processes. Environmental effects may be included using various dielectric‐medium and quantum‐mechanics/molecular‐mechanics models. Large molecules may be studied using linear‐scaling and massively parallel algorithms. Dalton is distributed at no cost from http://www.daltonprogram.org for a number of UNIX platforms.This article is categorized under: Software > Quantum Chemistry

In this paper, the history, present status, and future of density-functional theory (DFT) is informally reviewed and discussed by 70 workers in the field, including molecular scientists, materials scientists, method developers and practitioners.

Accurate sets of benchmark nuclear-magnetic-resonance shielding constants and spin–rotation constants are calculated using coupled-cluster singles–doubles (CCSD) theory and coupled-cluster singles–doubles–perturbative-triples [CCSD(T)] theory, in a variety of basis sets consisting of (rotational) London atomic orbitals. The accuracy of the calculated coupled-cluster constants is established by a careful comparison with experimental data, taking into account zero-point vibrational corrections. Coupled-cluster basis-set convergence is analyzed and extrapolation techniques are employed to estimate basis-set-limit quantities, thereby establishing an accurate benchmark data set. Together with the set provided for rotational g-tensors and magnetizabilities in our previous work [O. B. Lutnæs, A. M. Teale, T. Helgaker, D. J. Tozer, K. Ruud, and J. Gauss, J. Chem. Phys. 131, 144104 (2009)]10.1063/1.3242081, it provides a substantial source of consistently calculated high-accuracy data on second-order magnetic response properties. The utility of this benchmark data set is demonstrated by examining a wide variety of Kohn–Sham exchange–correlation functionals for the calculation of these properties. None of the existing approximate functionals provide an accuracy competitive with that provided by CCSD or CCSD(T) theory. The need for a careful consideration of vibrational effects is clearly illustrated. Finally, the pure coupled-cluster results are compared with the results of Kohn–Sham calculations constrained to give the same electronic density. Routes to future improvements are discussed in light of this comparison.

Orbital energies in Kohn–Sham density functional theory (DFT) are investigated, paying attention to the role of the integer discontinuity in the exact exchange-correlation potential. A series of closed-shell molecules are considered, comprising some that vertically bind an excess electron and others that do not. High-level ab initio electron densities are used to calculate accurate orbital energy differences, Δϵ, between the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) and the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), using the same potential for both. They are combined with accurate vertical ionization potentials, I0, and electron affinities, A0, to determine accurate “average” orbital energies. These are the orbital energies associated with an exchange-correlation potential that averages over a constant jump in the accurate potential, of magnitude ΔXC=(I0−A0)−Δϵ, as given by the discontinuity analysis. Local functional HOMO energies are shown to be almost an order of magnitude closer to these average values than to −I0, with typical discrepancies of just 0.02 a.u. For systems that do not bind an excess electron, this level of agreement is only achieved when A0 is set equal to the negative experimental affinity from electron transmission spectroscopy (ETS); it degrades notably when the zero ground state affinity is instead used. Analogous observations are made for the local functional LUMO energies, although the need to use the ETS affinities is less pronounced for systems where the ETS values are very negative. The application of an asymptotic correction recovers the preference, leading to positive LUMO energies (but bound orbitals) for these systems, consistent with the behavior of the average energies. The asymptotically corrected LUMO energies typically agree with the average values to within 0.02 a.u., comparable to that observed with the HOMOs. The study provides numerical support for the view that local functionals exhibit a near-average behavior based on a constant jump of magnitude ΔXC. It illustrates why a recently proposed DFT expression involving local functional frontier orbital energies and ionization potential yields reasonable estimates of negative ETS affinities and is consistent with earlier work on the failure of DFT for charge-transfer excited states. The near-average behavior of the exchange-correlation potential is explicitly illustrated for selected systems. The nature of hybrid functional orbital energies is also mentioned, and the results of the study are discussed in terms of the variation in electronic energy as a function of electron number. The nature of DFT orbital energies is of great importance in chemistry; this study contributes to the understanding of these quantities.

Using a recently implemented technique for the calculation of the adiabatic connection (AC) of density functional theory (DFT) based on Lieb maximization with respect to the external potential, the AC is studied for atoms and molecules containing up to ten electrons: the helium isoelectronic series, the hydrogen molecule, the beryllium isoelectronic series, the neon atom, and the water molecule. The calculation of AC curves by Lieb maximization at various levels of electronic-structure theory is discussed. For each system, the AC curve is calculated using Hartree–Fock (HF) theory, second-order Møller–Plesset (MP2) theory, coupled-cluster singles-and-doubles (CCSD) theory, and coupled-cluster singles-doubles-perturbative-triples [CCSD(T)] theory, expanding the molecular orbitals and the effective external potential in large Gaussian basis sets. The HF AC curve includes a small correlation-energy contribution in the context of DFT, arising from orbital relaxation as the electron-electron interaction is switched on under the constraint that the wave function is always a single determinant. The MP2 and CCSD AC curves recover the bulk of the dynamical correlation energy and their shapes can be understood in terms of a simple energy model constructed from a consideration of the doubles-energy expression at different interaction strengths. Differentiation of this energy expression with respect to the interaction strength leads to a simple two-parameter doubles model (AC-D) for the AC integrand (and hence the correlation energy of DFT) as a function of the interaction strength. The structure of the triples-energy contribution is considered in a similar fashion, leading to a quadratic model for the triples correction to the AC curve (AC-T). From a consideration of the structure of a two-level configuration-interaction (CI) energy expression of the hydrogen molecule, a simple two-parameter CI model (AC-CI) is proposed to account for the effects of static correlation on the AC. When parametrized in terms of the same input data, the AC-CI model offers improved performance over the corresponding AC-D model, which is shown to be the lowest-order contribution to the AC-CI model. The utility of the accurately calculated AC curves for the analysis of standard density functionals is demonstrated for the BLYP exchange-correlation functional and the interaction-strength-interpolation (ISI) model AC integrand. From the results of this analysis, we investigate the performance of our proposed two-parameter AC-D and AC-CI models when a simple density functional for the AC at infinite interaction strength is employed in place of information at the fully interacting point. The resulting two-parameter correlation functionals offer a qualitatively correct behavior of the AC integrand with much improved accuracy over previous attempts. The AC integrands in the present work are recommended as a basis for further work, generating functionals that avoid spurious error cancellations between exchange and correlation energies and give good accuracy for the range of densities and types of correlation contained in the systems studied here.