Linear-Scaling Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory Based on the Idea of "From Fragments to Molecule"

To circumvent the cubic scaling and convergence difficulties encountered in the standard top-down localization of the global canonical molecular orbitals (CMOs), a bottom-up localization scheme is proposed based on the idea of "from fragments to molecule". That is, the global localized MOs (LMOs), both occupied and unoccupied, are to be synthesized from the primitive fragment LMOs (pFLMOs) obtained from subsystem calculations. They are orthonormal but are still well localized on the parent fragments of the pFLMOs and can hence be termed as "fragment LMOs" (FLMOs). This has been achieved by making use of two important factors. Physically, it is the transferability of the locality of the fragments that serves as the basis. Mathematically, it is the special block-diagonalization of the Kohn-Sham matrix that allows retention of the locality: The occupied-occupied and virtual-virtual diagonal blocks are only minimally modified when the occupied-virtual off-diagonal blocks are annihilated. Such a bottom-up localization scheme is applicable to systems composed of all kinds of chemical bonds. It is then shown that, by a simple prescreening of the particle-hole pairs, the FLMO-based time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) can achieve linear scaling with respect to the system size, with a very small prefactor. As a proof of principle, representative model systems are taken as examples to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithms. As both the orbital picture and integral number of electrons are retained, the FLMO-TDDFT offers a clear characterization of the nature of the excited states in line with chemical/physical intuition.