Potential energy surface discontinuities in local correlation methods

Abstract

We have examined the occurrence of discontinuities in bond-breaking potential energy surfaces given by local correlation methods based on the Pulay-Saebø orbital domain approach. Our analysis focuses on three prototypical dissociating systems: the C-F bond in fluoromethane, the C-C bond in singlet, ketene, and the central C-C bond in propadienone. We find that such discontinuities do not occur in cases of homolytic bond cleavage due to the inability of the Pipek-Mezey orbital localization method to separate singlet-coupled charges on distant fragments. However, for heterolytic bond cleavage, such as that observed in singlet ketene and propadienone, discontinuities occur both at stretched geometries and near equilibrium. These discontinuities are usually small, but may be of the same order of magnitude as the localization error in some cases.