A linear-scaling
local second-order Møller–Plesset
(MP2) method is presented for high-spin open-shell molecules based
on restricted open-shell (RO) reference functions. The open-shell
local MP2 (LMP2) approach inherits the iteration- and redundancy-free
formulation and the completely integral-direct, OpenMP-parallel, and
memory and disk use economic algorithms of our closed-shell LMP2 implementation.
By utilizing restricted local molecular orbitals for the demanding
integral transformation step and by introducing a novel long-range
spin-polarization approximation, the computational cost of RO-LMP2
approaches that of closed-shell LMP2. Extensive benchmarks were performed
for reactions of radicals, ionization potentials, as well as spin-state
splittings of carbenes and transition-metal complexes. Compared to
the conventional MP2 reference for systems of up to 175 atoms, local
errors of at most 0.1 kcal/mol were found, which are well below the
intrinsic accuracy of MP2. RO-LMP2 computations are presented for
challenging protein models of up to 601 atoms and 11 000 basis
functions, which involve either spin states of a complexed iron ion
or a highly delocalized singly occupied orbital. The corresponding
runtimes of 9–15 h obtained with a single, many-core CPU demonstrate
that MP2, as well as spin-scaled MP2 and double-hybrid density functional
methods, become widely accessible for open-shell systems of unprecedented
size and complexity.