Automatic Selection of Active Orbitals from Generalized Valence Bond Orbitals

The accurate multireference (MR) calculation of a strongly correlated chemical system usually relies on a correct preselection of a small number of active orbitals from numerous molecular orbitals. Currently, the active orbitals are generally determined by using a trial-and-error method. Such a preselection by chemical intuition and personal experience may be tedious or unreliable, especially for large complicated systems, and accordingly, the construction of active space becomes a bottleneck for large-scale MR calculations. In this work, we propose to automatically select the active orbitals according to the natural orbital occupation numbers by performing black box generalized valence bond calculations. We demonstrate the accuracy of this method through testing calculations of the ground states in various systems, ranging from bond dissociation of diatomic molecules (N-2, C-2, Cr-2) to conjugated molecules (pentacene, hexacene, and heptacene) as well as a binuclear transition-metal complex [Mn2O2(H2O)(2) (terpy)(2)](3+) (terpy = 2,2':6,2 ''-terpyridine) with active spaces up to (30e, 30o) and comparing with the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF), density matrix renormalization group (DMRG)-CASSCF references, and other recently proposed inexpensive strategies for constructing active spaces. The results indicate that our method is among the most successful ones within our comparison, providing high-quality initial active orbitals very close to the finally optimized (DMRG-)CASSCF orbitals. The method proposed here is expected to greatly benefit the practical implementation of large active space ground-state MR calculations, for example, large-scale DMRG calculations.