Explicitly-correlated Gaussian geminals in electronic structure calculations

Explicitly correlated functions have been used since 1929, but initially only for two-electron systems. In 1960, Boys and Singer showed that if the correlating factor is of Gaussian form, many-electron integrals can be computed for general molecules. The capability of explicitly correlated Gaussian (ECG) functions to accurately describe many-electron atoms and molecules was demonstrated only in the early 1980s when Monkhorst, Zabolitzky and the present authors cast the many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) and coupled cluster (CC) equations as a system of integro-differential equations and developed techniques of solving these equations with two-electron ECG functions (Gaussian-type geminals, GTG). This work brought a new accuracy standard to MBPT/CC calculations. In 1985, Kutzelnigg suggested that the linear r12 correlating factor can also be employed if n-electron integrals, n 2, are factorised with the resolution of identity. Later, this factor was replaced by more general functions f (r12), most often by [image omitted], usually represented as linear combinations of Gaussian functions which makes the resulting approach (called F12) a special case of the original GTG expansion. The current state-of-art is that, for few-electron molecules, ECGs provide more accurate results than any other basis available, but for larger systems the F12 approach is the method of choice, giving significant improvements over orbital calculations.