Ab initio CI calculations on benzene with an extended basis set

An extended basis set of triple zeta plus polarization quality is employed to carry out configuration interaction (CI) calculations of the three lowest singlet and triplet excited states of benzene. The CI calculation is carried out by taking into account single and double excitations of π and σ electrons. In the CI, composite natural orbitals (CNOs), which are constructed from the natural orbitals of the ground state of ethylene, are used as virtual orbitals. The aim of using CNOs is to reduce the number of virtual orbitals to be used in constructing configuration-state functions, thus cutting down CI dimensions without losing reasonable accuracy. The excitation energies resulting from the CI are in fairly good agreement with experiment. The root mean square of the deviation is 0.22 eV for the six calculated energies and the largest disagreement is 0.37 eV for the third singlet excited state. To obtain better excitation energies by an ab initio calculation, it seems likely that we need to take into account more electron correlation than in the present calculation. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.