Perturbation theory corrections to the two-particle reduced density matrix variational method

In the variational 2-particle-reduced-density-matrix (2-RDM) method, the ground-state energy is minimized with respect to the 2-particle reduced density matrix, constrained by N-representability conditions. Consider the N-electron Hamiltonian H(lambda) as a function of the parameter lambda where we recover the Fock Hamiltonian at lambda=0 and we recover the fully correlated Hamiltonian at lambda=1. We explore using the accuracy of perturbation theory at small lambda to correct the 2-RDM variational energies at lambda=1 where the Hamiltonian represents correlated atoms and molecules. A key assumption in the correction is that the 2-RDM method will capture a fairly constant percentage of the correlation energy for lambda in (0,1] because the nonperturbative 2-RDM approach depends more significantly upon the nature rather than the strength of the two-body Hamiltonian interaction. For a variety of molecules we observe that this correction improves the 2-RDM energies in the equilibrium bonding region, while the 2-RDM energies at stretched or nearly dissociated geometries, already highly accurate, are not significantly changed. At equilibrium geometries the corrected 2-RDM energies are similar in accuracy to those from coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD), but at nonequilibrium geometries the 2-RDM energies are often dramatically more accurate as shown in the bond stretching and dissociation data for water and nitrogen.