Nonorthogonal orbital based n-body reduced density matrices and their applications to valence bond theory. III. Second-order perturbation theory using valence bond self-consistent field function as reference

Using the formulas and techniques developed in Papers I and II of this series, the recently developed second-order perturbation theory based on a valence bond self-consistent field reference function (VBPT2) has been extended by using the internally contracted correction wave function. This ansatz strongly reduces the size of the interaction space compared to the uncontracted wave function and thus improves the capability of the VBPT2 method dramatically. Test calculations show that internally contracted VBPT2 using only a small number of reference valence bond functions, can give results as accuracy as the VBPT2 method and other more sophisticated methods such as full configuration interaction and multireference configuration interaction. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.