The basis-set convergence of the electronic correlation energy in the water molecule is investigated at the second-order Mo/ller–Plesset level and at the coupled-cluster singles-and-doubles level with and without perturbative triples corrections applied. The basis-set limits of the correlation energy are established to within 2 mEh by means of (1) extrapolations from sequences of calculations using correlation-consistent basis sets and (2) from explicitly correlated calculations employing terms linear in the interelectronic distances rij. For the extrapolations to the basis-set limit of the correlation energies, fits of the form a+bX−3 (where X is two for double-zeta sets, three for triple-zeta sets, etc.) are found to be useful. CCSD(T) calculations involving as many as 492 atomic orbitals are reported.

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Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Electronic excitation energies are determined using the CAM-B3LYP Coulomb-attenuated functional ͓T. Yanai et al. Chem. Phys. Lett. 393, 51 ͑2004͔͒, together with a standard generalized gradient approximation ͑GGA͒ and hybrid functional. The degree of spatial overlap between the occupied and virtual orbitals involved in an excitation is measured using a quantity ⌳, and the extent to which excitation energy errors correlate with ⌳ is quantified. For a set of 59 excitations of local, Rydberg, and intramolecular charge-transfer character in 18 theoretically challenging main-group molecules, CAM-B3LYP provides by far the best overall performance; no correlation is observed between excitation energy errors and ⌳, reflecting the good quality, balanced description of all three categories of excitation. By contrast, a clear correlation is observed for the GGA and, to a lesser extent, the hybrid functional, allowing a simple diagnostic test to be proposed for judging the reliability of a general excitation from these functionals-when ⌳ falls below a prescribed threshold, excitations are likely to be in very significant error. The study highlights the ambiguous nature of the term "charge transfer," providing insight into the observation that while many charge-transfer excitations are poorly described by GGA and hybrid functionals, others are accurately reproduced.

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