Constrained numerical gradients and composite gradients : Practical tools for geometry optimization and potential energy surface navigation

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Journal of computational chemistry. - 1984. - 36(2015), 22 vom: 15. Aug., Seite 1698-708
1. Verfasser: Stenrup, Michael (VerfasserIn)
Weitere Verfasser: Lindh, Roland, Fdez Galván, Ignacio
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2015
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:Journal of computational chemistry
Schlagworte:Journal Article MOLCAS constrained geometry optimization numerical gradients
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A method is proposed to easily reduce the number of energy evaluations required to compute numerical gradients when constraints are imposed on the system, especially in connection with rigid fragment optimization. The method is based on the separation of the coordinate space into a constrained and an unconstrained space, and the numerical differentiation is done exclusively in the unconstrained space. The decrease in the number of energy calculations can be very important if the system is significantly constrained. The performance of the method is tested on systems that can be considered as composed of several rigid groups or molecules, and the results show that the error with respect to conventional optimizations is of the order of the convergence criteria. Comparison with another method designed for rigid fragment optimization proves the present method to be competitive. The proposed method can also be applied to combine numerical and analytical gradients computed at different theory levels, allowing an unconstrained optimization with numerical differentiation restricted to the most significant degrees of freedom. This approach can be a practical alternative when analytical gradients are not available at the desired computational level and full numerical differentiation is not affordable
Beschreibung:Date Completed 21.09.2015
Date Revised 16.07.2015
published: Print-Electronic
Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE
ISSN:1096-987X
DOI:10.1002/jcc.23987