Analysis and comparison of CVS-ADC approaches up to third order for the calculation of core-excited states

The extended second order algebraic-diagrammatic construction (ADC(2)-x) scheme for the polarization operator in combination with core-valence separation (CVS) approximation is well known to be a powerful quantum chemical method for the calculation of core-excited states and the description of X-ray absorption spectra. For the first time, the implementation and results of the third order approach CVS-ADC(3) are reported. Therefore, the CVS approximation has been applied to the ADC(3) working equations and the resulting terms have been implemented efficiently in the adcman program. By treating the alpha and beta spins separately from each other, the unrestricted variant CVS-UADC(3) for the treatment of open-shell systems has been implemented as well. The performance and accuracy of the CVS-ADC(3) method are demonstrated with respect to a set of small and middle-sized organic molecules. Therefore, the results obtained at the CVS-ADC(3) level are compared with CVS-ADC(2)-x values as well as experimental data by calculating complete basis set limits. The influence of basis sets is further investigated by employing a large set of different basis sets. Besides the accuracy of core-excitation energies and oscillator strengths, the importance of cartesian basis functions and the treatment of orbital relaxation effects are analyzed in this work as well as computational timings. It turns out that at the CVS-ADC(3) level, the results are not further improved compared to CVS-ADC(2)-x and experimental data, because the fortuitous error compensation inherent in the CVS-ADC(2)-x approach is broken. While CVS-ADC(3) overestimates the core excitation energies on average by 0.61% +/- 0.31%, CVS-ADC(2)-x provides an averaged underestimation of -0.22% +/- 0.12%. Eventually, the best agreement with experiments can be achieved using the CVS-ADC(2)-x method in combination with a diffuse cartesian basis set at least at the triple-zeta level. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.