Recent developments in the PySCF program package.

PySCF is a Python-based general-purpose electronic structure platform that supports first-principles simulations of molecules and solids as well as accelerates the development of new methodology and complex computational workflows. This paper explains the design and philosophy behind PySCF that enables it to meet these twin objectives. With several case studies, we show how users can easily implement their own methods using PySCF as a development environment.

Lowering of the complexity of quantum chemistry methods by choice of representation.

The complexity of the standard hierarchy of quantum chemistry methods is not invariant to the choice of representation. This work explores how the scaling of common quantum chemistry methods can be reduced using real-space, momentum-space, and time-dependent intermediate representations without introducing approximations. We find the scalings of exact Gaussian basis Hartree-Fock theory, second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory, and coupled cluster theory (specifically, linearized coupled cluster doubles and the distinguishable cluster approximation with doubles) to be O(N), O(N), and O(N), respectively, where N denotes the system size.

Gaussian and plane-wave mixed density fitting for periodic systems.

We introduce a mixed density fitting scheme that uses both a Gaussian and a plane-wave fitting basis to accurately evaluate electron repulsion integrals in crystalline systems. We use this scheme to enable efficient all-electron Gaussian based periodic density functional and Hartree-Fock calculations.