7.22. Density Matrix Renormalization Group¶

The BLOCK code in ORCA is only available on the Linux platform!

BLOCK is an implementation of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm from the Chan group. [156, 157, 158, 296, 789] The references given should be cited when using this part of the program.

The DMRG is a variational wavefunction method. It can be viewed as (i) an efficient method for strong correlation in large complete active spaces, (ii) a brute force method to systematically approach FCI for a large number of electrons and orbitals, (iii) a polynomial cost route to exact correlation in pseudo-one-dimensional molecules, such as chains and rings.

Although the algorithm is somewhat complicated compared to many quantum chemistry methods, significant effort has been devoted in BLOCK to ensure that it can be run in a simple black-box fashion. In most cases, only a single keyword needs to be specified.

To provide an idea of how the DMRG can be used, here are some examples. The timings will vary depending on your computational setup, but the following are calculations that run in a few hours to a day, on a single 12-core Xeon Westmere cluster node:

Complete active space (CAS) CI calculations for active spaces with up to 30 electrons in 30 active orbitals, targetting up to 1–10 states, e.g. Jacobsen’s catalyst in a 32 electron, 25 orbital active space,
One-dimensional chain molecules, with “widths” of up to 4 orbitals, and about 100 orbitals in total, e.g. the \(\pi\)-active space of a 4\(\times\)25 graphene nanoribbon,
FCI benchmark solutions in molecules with fewer than 20 electrons, and up to 100 orbitals, e.g. C\(_2\) in a cc-pVTZ basis, D\(_{\text{2h} }\) symmetry (12 electrons in 60 orbitals),
Accuracies in energy differences or total energies of about 1 kcal/mol.

The following are calculations which are possible with the BLOCK code, but which are challenging, and require large memory (e.g. up to 8 GB per core) and computational time (e.g. from a day to more than a week on up to 6 12-core Xeon Westmere nodes),

Complete active space (CAS) CI calculations in active spaces with around 40 electrons in 40 active orbitals, targetting a few states, for example, an Fe(II)-porphine (40 electrons in 38 orbitals) with an active space of Fe 3d, 4d and all porphine \(\pi\) and \(\sigma\) donor orbitals, or an Fe 3d, S 3p active space calculation for [Fe\(_4\)S\(_4\)(SCH\(_3\)) \(_4\)]\(^{2-}\),
One-dimensional chain molecules, with “widths” of up to 6 orbitals, and about 100 total orbitals,
Champion FCI benchmark solutions in small molecules, such as butadiene in a cc-pVDZ basis (22 electrons in 82 orbitals),
Accuracies in energy differences or total energies of about 1 kcal/mol.

If any these calculations interest you, then you might want to try a DMRG calculation with BLOCK!

7.22.1. Technical capabilities¶

Currently, BLOCK implements the following

An efficient DMRG algorithm for quantum chemistry Hamiltonians
Full spin-adaptation (SU(2) symmetry) and Abelian point-group symmetries
State-averaged excited states

Note that the standalone version of BLOCK may provide more capabilities than are available through the external interface. See the BLOCK website for details [155].

7.22.2. How to cite¶

We would appreciate if you cite the following papers in publications resulting from the use of BLOCK :

G. K.-L. Chan and M. Head-Gordon, J. Chem. Phys. 116, 4462 (2002),
G. K.-L. Chan, J. Chem. Phys. 120, 3172 (2004),
D. Ghosh, J. Hachmann, T. Yanai, and G. K.-L. Chan, J. Chem. Phys., 128, 144117 (2008),
S. Sharma and G. K-.L. Chan, J. Chem. Phys. 136, 124121 (2012).

In addition, useful DMRG references relevant to quantum chemistry can be found in the review below by Chan and Sharma.

G. K-.L. Chan and S. Sharma, Ann. Rev. Phys. Chem. 62, 465 (2011),

7.22.3. Overview of BLOCK input and calculations¶

Within ORCA, the BLOCK program is accessed as part of the CASSCF module. BLOCK can be run in two modes: CASCI mode (no orbital optimization) or CASSCF mode. To enable CASCI mode, set maxiter 1.

%casscf
   maxiter 1 # remove if doing CASSCF
   CIStep DMRGCI
   ...
   end

For small molecule CASCI it may be possible to correlate all orbitals. In general, similar to a standard CASSCF calculation, it is necessary to select a sensible active space to correlate. (See Section Orbital optimization on CASSCF). This is the responsibility of the user.

7.22.4. Standard commands¶

Once the orbitals to correlate have been chosen, and the wavefunction symmetries and quantum numbers are specified, the accuracy of the DMRG calculation is governed by two parameters: the maximum number of renormalized states \(M\); and, the order and localization of the orbitals.

The most important parameter in the DMRG calculation is \(M\), the number of renormalized states. This defines the maximum size of the wave-function expansion, which is \(O(M^2)\) in length in the renormalized basis. As \(M\) is increased, the DMRG energy converges to the exact (FCI or CASCI) limit.

The DMRG maps orbitals onto a 1D lattice, thus the best results are achieved if strongly interacting orbitals are placed next to each other. For this reason, the DMRG energy is not generally invariant to orbital rotations within the active space, and orbital rotation and ordering can improve the DMRG energy for a given \(M\). As \(M\) is increased, the DMRG energy becomes less and less sensitive to the orbital ordering and localization.

To minimize the number of wavefunction optimization steps, it is often advantageous to perform DMRG calculations at small \(M\), then increase \(M\) to the final maximum value. This sequence of optimizations is governed by the sweep schedule, which specifies how many optimization steps (sweeps) to perform at each intermediate value of \(M\).

The above may seem to make running a DMRG calculation more complicated than a usual quantum chemistry calculation, however, BLOCK provides a set of default settings which eliminate the need to specify the above parameters by hand. We highly recommend that you first learn to use the BLOCK program with these default settings. In the default mode, the orbitals are ordered automatically (Fiedler vector method [58, 72, 259, 260]) and a default sweep schedule is set.

An example of a default CASCI calculation on the C~2~ molecule correlating all electrons in a VTZ basis, is given here:

!cc-pvtz pal4
%MaxCore 16000
%casscf
    nel 8
    norb 58
    nroots 1
    mult 1
    maxiter 1
    CIStep DMRGCI
    DMRG
        maxM 5000
    end
end

* xyz 0 1
C 0 0 -0.621265
C 0 0  0.621265
*

Once you are familiar with the default mode, we recommend exploring the localization of orbitals. In general, DMRG benefits from the use of localized orbitals, and these should be used unless the high-symmetry of the molecule (e.g., D\(_{2h}\) symmetry) provides compensating computational benefits. We recommend using “split-localized” orbitals, which correspond to localizing the occupied and virtual orbitals separately. An example of a split-localized default DMRG calculation on the porphine molecule, correlating the full \(\pi\)-space (26 electrons in 24 orbitals), in a cc-pVDZ basis is given in Sec. Appendix: Porphine \pi-active space calculation.

For a given maxM, it can take a long time to tightly converge DMRG calculations (e.g. to the default 1e-9 tolerance). To decrease computation time, you may wish to loosen the default tight sweep tolerance or control the maximum number of sweep iterations with the commands sweeptol and maxIter.

7.22.4.1. Orbital optimization¶

Orbital optimization (mixing the external/internal space with the active space, not to be confused with orbital rotation and ordering in the active space) in DMRG calculation can be performed by using the BLOCK program as the “CIStep” within a CASSCF calculation, as described above. For the moment, spin-densities and related properties are not available for this CIStep.

During the optimization iterations it is important that the active orbitals maintain their overlap and ordering with previous iterations. This is done using actConstrains. This flag is set by default.

%casscf
ActConstrains  1 # maintain shape and ordering of active orbitals
...
end

In general, performing a DMRG calculation with orbital optimization is quite expensive. Therefore, it is often best to carry out the orbital optimization using a small value of maxM (enabled by the default parameters maxM=25 and the resulting sweep schedule), and to carry out a final single-point calculation using a larger value of maxM.

7.22.4.2. Advanced options¶

There may be times when one wants finer control of the DMRG calculation. All keywords are shown in the complete set of BLOCK options Complete set of BLOCK options below. The startM command allows to change the starting number of states in DMRG calculations. It is also possible to specify the entire sweep schedule manually. A sweep schedule example follows:

%casscf
   ...
  dmrg

    MaxIter          14
    switch_rst       1e-3
    TwoDot_to_oneDot 12
    NSchedule        3
    sche_iteration   0,     4,    8
    sche_M          50,   100,  500
    sche_sweeptol 1e-4,  1e-6, 1e-9
    sche_noise    1e-8, 1e-11,  0.0

  end
end

The commands above are:

MaxIter, corresponds to the maximum number of sweeps done by DMRG;
NSchedule, specifies the total number of schedule parameters we will specify;
Sche_iteration, details the sweep number at which to change the parameters of the calculation. Notice count begins at 0;
Sche_M, is the number of renormalized states at each sweep;
Sche_sweeptol, is the tolerance of the Davidson algorithm;
Sche_noise, is the amount of perturbative noise we add each sweep;
Twodot_to_onedot, specifies the sweep at which the switch is made from a twodot to a onedot algorithm. The recommended choice is to start with twodot algorithm and then switch to onedot algorithm a few sweeps after the maximum \(M\) has been reached. To do a calculation entirely with the twodot or the onedot algorithm, replace the twodot_to_onedot line with twodot 1 or onedot 1;
switch_rst, defines the switching threshold of orbital gradient below which DMRG turns to onedot algorithm and restarts from previous operators and wavefunction. This is essential to avoid oscillation of energy values in the orbital optimization.

The default DMRG sweep schedule is selected automatically according to the choice of computational mode. By default two different sets of predefined schedules are supported for CASCI and CASSCF computations, respectively.

In CASCI mode, the default schedule corresponds to the following: starting from a given startM (where the default is 250 and 8 sweeps), increase to a value of 1000 (8 sweeps) and increment by 1000 every 4 iterations until maxM is reached. The algorithm switches from twodot to onedot two sweeps after the maxM has been reached.

In CASSCF mode, the orbital optimization requires much fewer renormalized states to converge the wavefunction with respect to orbital rotations. The default schedule therefore starts with startM (where the default is 25 and 2 sweeps), and increments by a factor of 2 every 2 sweeps util maxM is reached. The algorithm continues the sweep at maxM by decreasing the Davison tolerance sche_sweeptol and noise level sche_noise every 2 cycles by a factor of 10, until sche_sweeptol becomes smaller than sweeptol.

For better control of the orbital ordering, we also provide a genetic algorithm minimization method of a weighted exchange matrix. The genetic algorithm usually provides a superior orbital ordering to the default ordering, but can itself take some time to run for large numbers of orbitals. The genetic algorithm can be enabled by

%casscf
   ...
   DMRG
     auto_ordering GAOPT
   end
end

within the %casscf input.

7.22.4.3. Troubleshooting¶

The two most common problems with DMRG calculations are that (i) convergence with maxM is slower than desired, or (ii) the DMRG sweeps get stuck in a local minimum. (i) is governed by the orbital ordering / choice of orbitals. To improve convergence, turn on the genetic algorithm orbital ordering.

If you suspect (ii) is occurring, the simplest thing to do is to increase the starting number of states with the startM (e.g. from 500 to 1000 states). Local minima can also sometimes be avoided by increasing the noise in the DMRG schedule, e.g. by a factor of 10. To check that you are stuck in a local minimum, you can carry out a DMRG extrapolation (see extended Manual in the BLOCK website).

Note that the present DMRG-SCF establishes the input order of active space orbitals according to their Hartree-Fock occupancy, even if these orbitals are ultimately canonical or split-localized canonical in nature. This is specified by hf_occ in which the Hartree-Fock occupancy is derived by default from the one-electron integrals. Other options for obtaining the occupancy are available (see Complete set of BLOCK options).

Somet times the energy values produced from one SCF cycle to another may oscillate. Such a nonlinear numerical behaviour may occur typically by the last few iterations, most likely caused by the loss of a certain distribution of quantum numbers (eg, particle number, irrep symmetry and spin) in the blocking and decimation procedure due to incomplete many-body basis. On the other hand, the loss of quantum numbers is the main source of energy discontinuities on potential energy curves calculated by DMRG-SCF using a small number of renormalized states.

In the current release of DMRG-SCF implementation, the number of quantum states is locked to avoid these problems. The locking mechanism is turned on when the orbital gradient falls below a certain threshold defined by the keyword switch_rst (default: 0.001). The DMRG calculation then starts from previous operators and wavefunction in which a perturbative noise is not added. Locking quantum states and restaring DMRG wavefunction not only ensures a smooth convergence towards the final energy but also minimizes the number of iterations. Note that the locking procedure introduces an arbitrariness to the final energy, when a very small \(M\) is used, since the final digits of energy depend on where the locking begins. It is therefore not recommended to start locking too early in iterations which could trap the orbital solution in a local mimimum. Finally the quality of resulting orbitals can be checked by carrying out a DMRG calculation with sufficient renormalized states. Using the default value of switch_rst DMRG-SCF usually results in the orbitals that are good enough to reproduce the CASSCF energy.

7.22.4.4. Complete set of `BLOCK` options¶

%casscf
 ...
 dmrg

 startM   25     # CASSCF mode: number of re-normalized states for a singlee root
          250    # CASCI mode: number of re-normalized states for a single root
 maxM     25     # CASSCF mode: number of re-normalized states for a singlee root
          250    # CASCI mode: number of re-normalized states for a single root
 DryRun   false  # just create an input for Block
 SweepTol 1e-9   # energy tolerance for the sweeps 
 auto_ordering NOREORDER # auto_ordering is an int. If set to 0
                         # or the alias NOREORDER, the reordering is skipped.
               FIEDLER   # (default) let Block optimize the active orbital ordering
               GAOPT     # let Block optimize the active orbital ordering
                         # using genetic algorithm
 hf_occ   0 # user-defined initial Hartree-Fock occupancy manually
          1 # default: initial Hartree-Fock occupancy based on the values of 
              the one-electron integrals
          2 # initial Hartree-Fock occupancy based on the energy ordering 
              of canonical orbitals

 TwoDot_to_OneDot  1  # Switch from two-dot expressions to one-dot
 OneDot  0   # Only one-dot expressions. %In CASCI mode only.
 TwoDot  0   # Only two-dot expressions. %In CASCI mode only.
 switch_rst 1e-3   # Specify the threshold of orbital gradient below which DMRG
                     swithches to one-dot expression by reading previous wavefunction.
 warmup  1   # wilson warm-up type
         2, 3 or 4   # n=3 is the default option. 
                       The full configuration space of the n sites next to the system 
                       constitutes the environment states in the warm-up. 
                       The remaining sites use the Hartree-Fock guess occupation
 nonspinadapted 0   # default: spin-adapted DMRG
                1   # non-spin-adatped DMRG in which the spin-density calculation 
                      is available
                

 # Define a schedule for DMRG
 MaxIter   14   # Specify maximum number of iterations
 NSchedule -1   # default sweep schedule in CASSCF mode 
            0   # default sweep schedule in CASCI mode
           >0   # Number of manual sweep schedule parameters 
                # All schedule parameters must be set if this flag is set manually!
 sche_iteration 0, 4, 8   # vector with sweep-number to execute changes
                          # (schedule parameter)

 sche_M        50,100,500   # vector with corresponding M values (schedule parameter)
 sche_sweeptol 1e-4,1e-6,1e-9  # vector with sweep tolerances (schedule parameter)
 sche_noise    1e-8, 1e-11,0.0 # vector with the noise level (schedule parameter)

 # Define a separate maxM for DMRG-NEVPT2
 nevpt2_maxm 25   # set maximum number of renormalized states 
                    for DMRG-NEVPT2 calculation (default: MaxM)

 end
end

7.22.5. Appendix: Porphine \(\pi\)-active space calculation¶

We provide a step-by-step basis on localizing the \(\pi\)-orbitals of the porphine molecules and running a CASSCF-DMRG calculation on this system. It will be important to obtain an initial set of orbitals, rotate the orbitals which are going to be localized, localize them, and finally run the CASSCF calculation. We will abbreviate the coordinates as \(\left[\dots\right]\) after showing the coordinates in the first input file, but please note they always need to be included.

First obtain RHF orbitals:

# To obtain RHF orbitals 
!cc-pvdz 
* xyz 0 1
N      2.10524     -0.00000     0.00000 
N     -0.00114      1.95475    -0.00000
N     -2.14882      0.00000    -0.00000 
N     -0.00114     -1.95475     0.00000
C      2.85587     -1.13749    -0.00000
C      2.85587      1.13749     0.00000 
C      1.02499      2.75869    -0.00000 
C     -1.10180      2.78036     0.00000
C     -2.93934      1.13019    -0.00000
C     -2.93934     -1.13019     0.00000
C     -1.10180     -2.78036    -0.00000
C      1.02499     -2.75869     0.00000
C      4.23561     -0.67410    -0.00000
C      4.23561      0.67410     0.00000 
C      0.69482      4.18829    -0.00000 
C     -0.63686      4.14584    -0.00000 
C     -4.25427      0.70589    -0.00000 
C     -4.25427     -0.70589     0.00000
C     -0.63686     -4.14584     0.00000 
C      0.69482     -4.18829     0.00000
H      5.10469     -1.31153     0.00000 
H      5.10469      1.31153    -0.00000
H      1.36066      5.02946     0.00000 
H     -1.28917      5.00543     0.00000 
H     -5.12454      1.34852     0.00000 
H     -5.12454     -1.34852    -0.00000 
H     -1.28917     -5.00543    -0.00000 
H      1.36066     -5.02946    -0.00000 
C      2.46219      2.41307     0.00000 
C     -2.39783      2.44193     0.00000 
C     -2.39783     -2.44193    -0.00000 
C      2.46219     -2.41307    -0.00000 
H      3.18114      3.22163    -0.00000 
H     -3.13041      3.24594    -0.00000 
H     -3.13041     -3.24594     0.00000 
H      3.18114     -3.22163     0.00000
H      1.08819      0.00000    -0.00000 
H     -1.13385     -0.00000     0.00000 
*  

We then swap orbitals with \(\pi\)-character so they are adjacent to each other in the active space. (\(\pi\) orbitals are identified by looking at the MO coefficients). When they are adjacent in the active space, they can be easily localized in the next step.

#To rotate the orbitals (so that we can localize them in the next step) 
!cc-pvdz moread noiter 
%moinp "porphine.gbw" 
%scf 
    rotate 
    # Swap orbitals
    {70, 72}
    {65, 71}
    {61, 70}
    {59, 69}
    {56, 68}
    {88, 84}
    {92, 85}
    {93, 86}
    {96, 87}
    {99, 88} 
    {102, 89}
    {103, 90}
    {104, 91}
    end
end 
* xyz 0 1
[...] 
*

After rotating the orbitals, we localize the 13 occupied \(\pi\)-orbitals. This is performed using the orca_loc code. The input file follows.
```
porphine_rot.gbw 
porphine_loc.gbw 
0
68
80
120
1e-3
0.9
0.9
1
```
After localizing the occuppied orbitals, we localize the 11 virtual \(\pi\)-orbitals using the orca_loc code once again. The input file follows.
```
porphine_loc.gbw
porphine_loc2.gbw
0
81
91
120
1e-3
0.9
0.9
1
```

After these steps are complete, we run a CASSCF-DMRG calculation. The standard input file is shown below

!cc-pvdz moread pal4 
%moinp "porphine_loc2.gbw" 
%MaxCore 16000

%casscf nel 26
norb 24
nroots 1
CIStep DMRGCI 
end 
* xyz 0 1
[...] 
*