Calculation of properties of crystalline lithium hydride using correlated wave function theory

The lattice parameter, bulk modulus, and cohesive energy of lithium hydride are calculated to very high accuracy through a combination of periodic and finite-cluster electronic structure calculations. The Hartree-Fock contributions are taken from earlier work in which plane-wave calculations were corrected for pseudopotential errors. Molecular electronic structure calculations on finite clusters are then used to compute the correlation contributions and finite-size effects are removed through the hierarchical scheme. The systematic improvability of the molecular electronic structure methods makes it possible to converge the static cohesive energy to within a few tenths of a millihartree. Zero-point energy contributions are determined from density functional theory phonon frequencies. All calculated properties of lithium hydride and deuteride agree with empirical observations to within experimental uncertainty.