We looked already into MP2 and also discussed its formal computational scaling. In the following we want to discuss a popular technique to reduce the prefactor of an MP2 implementation. This technique is known as resolution-of-the-identity approximation (RI) or density fitting (DF). Some authors prefer the name RI other DF, but RI-MP2 and DF-MP2 usually refers to the same method.
Introduction
The resolution-of-the-identity approximation (RI) [1-3] allows a more efficient handling of the 4 index integrals required to construct the MP2 doubles amplitudes. This approximation allows to factorize the integral in 3 and 2 index integrals by introducing a projection onto an auxiliary basis
where
The matrix \({\left[ {{V^{ - 1}}} \right]}_{PQ}\) ensures the ortohonormality of the auxiliary basis and for \(\hat{I}\) being idempotent e.g. \(\hat{I}^{2}=\hat{I}\). \(\hat{I}\) is only a resolution of the identity of a complete auxiliary basis is used. Thus, we usually have an approximation. But the RI approximation allows us to reformulate the 4 index integral as
It is convenient to introduce the so-called B intermediates
so that we have a symmetric expression for constructing the 4 index integrals
The cost for calculating the integrals is \(\mathcal O(N_O^2 N_v^2 N_x)\) and thus again \(\mathcal O(N^5)\) and we could not reduce the computational scaling, but the RI approximation is in case of MP2 often an efficiency boost. Let us compare the operation count for RI-MP2 and MP2.
Usually the auxiliary basis is 2 -- 3 times larger than the orbital basis. Thus, especially for calculations with few occupied orbitals and a large basis set large speed ups can be expected. Besides this theoretical arguments additionally the reduced I/O has to be considered, which helps in practice a lot to make a calculation feasible.
References
- J. L. Whitten. Coulombic Potential Energy Integrals and Approximations. The Journal of Chemical Physics, 58(10):4496–4501, 1973.
- O. Vahtras, J. Almlöf, and M. W. Feyereisen. Integral Approximations for LCAO-SCF Calculations. Chemical Physics Letters, 213:514–518, 1993.
- Florian Weigend, Marco Häser, Holger Patzelt, and Reinhart Ahlrichs. RI-MP2: Optimized Auxiliary Basis Sets and Demonstration of Efficiency. Chemical Physics Letters, 294(1-3):143–152, 1998.