ManyHF: A pragmatic automated method of finding lower-energy Hartree-Fock solutions for potential energy surface development

Developing global, high-dimensional potential energy surfaces (PESs) is a formidable task. Beside the challenges of PES fitting and fitting set generation, one also has to choose an electronic structure method capable of delivering accurate potential energy values for all geometries in the fitting set, even in regions far from equilibrium. Such regions are often plagued by Hartree-Fock (HF) convergence issues, and even if convergence is achieved, self-consistent field (SCF) procedures that are used to obtain HF solutions offer no guarantee that the solution found is the lowest-energy solution. We present a study of the reactant regions of CH3OH + OH center dot, C2H6 + F center dot, and CH3NH2 + Cl center dot, where the SCF procedure often converges to a higher-energy state or fails to converge, resulting in erratic post-HF energies and regions where no energy is obtained, both of which are major obstacles for PES development. We introduce a pragmatic method for automatically finding better HF solutions (dubbed ManyHF) and present evidence that it may extend the applicability of single-reference methods to some systems previously thought to require multireference methods. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.