Toward more accurate natural orbital functional approximations: Including 4-index cumulant contributions

Abstract

Accurate modeling of bond breaking remains a central challenge for reduced density matrix functional theory (RDMFT). Although some modern functionals can yield reasonably accurate dissociation energies, they often fail to reproduce key properties of the dissociated fragments, such as a vanishing fragment population covariance (also known as the delocalization index) and the correct total spin angular momentum of each fragment (local spin). In this study, we revisit the construction of natural orbital functionals by correcting the cumulant contribution produced by the PNOF5 functional. Our method enforces known contributions of the cumulant to local spin fragments and the delocalization index at the dissociation limit. We obtain the closest cumulant consistent with these physically motivated constraints and subsequently purify the corresponding one- and two-electron reduced density matrices by imposing the standard P, Q, and GN-representability conditions. The resulting functional yields improved behavior in strongly correlated regimes. Benchmarking on the dissociation of the singlet states of N2, NO+, O2, S2, and CO shows that, in the dissociation regime, the energies computed from the updated cumulant exactly reproduce the complete active space self-consistent field energies. We further analyze the limitations of the approach and identify scenarios in which the current approach performs poorly. This study provides a pathway for systematically improving natural orbital functionals to achieve reliable bond-breaking calculations within RDMFT.