Optimization of damping function parameters for -D3 and -D4 dispersion models for Hartree–Fock based symmetry-adapted perturbation theory

Symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) directly computes intermolecular interaction energy in terms of electrostatics, exchange-repulsion, induction/polarization, and London dispersion components. In SAPT based on Hartree–Fock (“SAPT0”) or based on density functional theory, the most time-consuming step is the computation of the dispersion terms. Previous work has explored the replacement of these expensive dispersion terms with simple damped asymptotic models. We recently examined [Schriber et al. J. Chem. Phys. 154, 234107 (2021)] the accuracy of SAPT0 when replacing its dispersion term with Grimme’s popular -D3 correction, reducing the computational cost scaling from O(N5) to O(N3). That work optimized damping function parameters for SAPT0-D3/jun-cc-pVDZ using estimates of the coupled-cluster complete basis set limit [CCSD(T)/CBS] on a 8299 dimer dataset. Here, we explore the accuracy of SAPT0-D3 with additional basis sets, along with an analogous model using -D4. Damping parameters are rather insensitive to basis sets, and the resulting SAPT0-D models are more accurate on average for total interaction energies than SAPT0. Our results are surprising in several respects: (1) improvement of -D4 over -D3 is negligible for these systems, even charged systems where -D4 should, in principle, be more accurate; (2) addition of Axilrod–Teller–Muto terms for three-body dispersion does not improve error statistics for this test set; and (3) SAPT0-D is even more accurate on average for total interaction energies than the much more computationally costly density functional theory based SAPT [SAPT(DFT)] in an aug-cc-pVDZ basis. However, SAPT0 and SAPT0-D3/D4 interaction energies benefit from significant error cancellation between exchange and dispersion terms.