Benchmark Relative Energies for Large Water Clusters with the Generalized Energy-Based Fragmentation Method

The generalized energy-based fragmentation (GEBF) method has been applied to investigate relative energies of large water clusters (H2O)n (n = 32, 64) with the coupled-cluster singles and doubles with noniterative triple excitations (CCSD(T)) and second-order Moller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) at the complete basis set (CBS) limit. Here large water clusters are chosen to be representative structures sampled from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of liquid water. Our calculations show that the GEBF method is capable of providing highly accurate relative energies for these water clusters in a cost-effective way. We demonstrate that the relative energies from GEBF-MP2/CBS are in excellent agreement with those from GEBF-CCSD(T)/CBS for these water clusters. With the GEBF-CCSD(T)/CBS relative energies as the benchmark results, we have assessed the performance of several theoretical methods widely used for ab initio MD simulations of liquids and aqueous solutions. These methods include density functiona...