Coupled-cluster theory for large molecules: The natural linear scaled coupled-cluster method

It is well-known in chemistry that there is a high degree of transferability among molecules, as, eg C-C bonds and C-H bonds tend to be largely the same from molecule to molecule. However, quantum chemistry has seldom benefited from this known transferability of information. What attempts there have been have mostly concerned a low-level of theory like Hartree-Fock, rather than with the proper inclusion of correlation effects, which, of course. are essential to achieving predictive accuracy. Today, as very large-scale HF (and DFT) calculations can be made, a coordinate treatment of electron correlation is required. This has inspired several different approaches that can eventually lead to linear scaling for coupled-cluster theory. However. none of these exploit the basic transferability that we might expect to be present in the treatment of the correlation problem, with its numerical and conceptual advantages.