Communication: Resolving the three-body contribution to the lattice energy of crystalline benzene: Benchmark results from coupled-cluster theory

Coupled-cluster theory including single, double, and perturbative triple excitations [ CCSD(T)] has been applied to trimers that appear in crystalline benzene in order to resolve discrepancies in the literature about the magnitude of non-additive three-body contributions to the lattice energy. The present results indicate a non-additive three-body contribution of 0.89 kcal mol(-1), or 7.2% of the revised lattice energy of -12.3 kcal mol-1. For the trimers for which we were able to compute CCSD(T) energies, we obtain a sizeable difference of 0.63 kcal mol(-1) between the CCSD(T) and MP2 three-body contributions to the lattice energy, confirming that three-body dispersion dominates over three-body induction. Taking this difference as an estimate of three-body dispersion for the closer trimers, and adding an Axilrod-Teller-Muto estimate of 0.13 kcal mol-1 for long-range contributions yields an overall value of 0.76 kcal mol-1 for three-body dispersion, a significantly smaller value than in several recent studies. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.