Selected configuration interaction with truncation energy error and application to the Ne atom.

Selected configuration interaction (SCI) for atomic and molecular electronic structure calculations is reformulated in a general framework encompassing all CI methods. The linked cluster expansion is used as an intermediate device to approximate CI coefficients B(K) of disconnected configurations (those that can be expressed as products of combinations of singly and doubly excited ones) in terms of CI coefficients of lower-excited configurations where each K is a linear combination of configuration-state-functions (CSFs) over all degenerate elements of K. Disconnected configurations up to sextuply excited ones are selected by Brown's energy formula, Delta E(K) = (E-H(KK))B(K)2/(1-B(K)2), with B(K) determined from coefficients of singly and doubly excited configurations. The truncation energy error from disconnected configurations, Delta E(dis), is approximated by the sum of Delta E(K)s of all discarded Ks. The remaining (connected) configurations are selected by thresholds based on natural orbital concepts. Given a model CI space M, a usual upper bound E(S) is computed by CI in a selected space S, and E(M) = E(S) + Delta E(dis) + delta E, where delta E is a residual error which can be calculated by well-defined sensitivity analyses. An SCI calculation on Ne ground state featuring 1077 orbitals is presented. Convergence to within near spectroscopic accuracy (0.5 cm(-1)) is achieved in a model space M of 1.4 x 10(9) CSFs (1.1 x 10(12) determinants) containing up to quadruply excited CSFs. Accurate energy contributions of quintuples and sextuples in a model space of 6.5 x 10(12) CSFs are obtained. The impact of SCI on various orbital methods is discussed. Since Delta E(dis) can readily be calculated for very large basis sets without the need of a CI calculation, it can be used to estimate the orbital basis incompleteness error. A method for precise and efficient evaluation of E(S) is taken up in a companion paper.