Notes on density matrix perturbation theory

Abstract

Density matrix perturbation theory (DMPT) is known as a promising alternative to the Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory, in which the sum-over-states (SOS) is replaced by algorithms with perturbed density matrices as the input variables. In this article, we formulate and discuss three types of DMPT, with two of them based only on density matrices: the approach of Kussmann and Ochsenfeld [J. Chem. Phys. 127, 054103 (2007)] is reformulated via the Sylvester equation and the recursive DMPT of Niklasson and Challacombe [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 193001 (2004)] is extended to the hole-particle canonical purification (HPCP) from Truflandier et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 144, 091102 (2016)]. A comparison of the computational performances shows that the aforementioned methods outperform the standard SOS. The HPCP-DMPT demonstrates stable convergence profiles but at a higher computational cost when compared to the original recursive polynomial method.