Advances in vibrational configuration interaction theory ‐ part 1: Efficient calculation of vibrational angular momentum terms

Finite basis vibrational configuration interaction theory (VCI) is a highly accurate method for the variational calculation of state energies and related properties, but suffers from fast growing computational costs in dependence of the size of the correlation space. In this series of papers, concepts and techniques will be presented, which diminish the computational demands and thus broaden the applicability of this method to larger molecules or more complex situations. This first part focuses on a highly efficient implementation of the vibrational angular momentum (VAM) terms as occurring in the Watson Hamiltonian and the prediagonalization of initial subspaces within an iterative configuration selective VCI implementation. Working equations and benchmark calculations are provided, the latter demonstrating the increased performance of the new algorithm.