A differential derivation of the Obara-Saika relation for Gaussian electron repulsion integrals
Abstract
The Obara-Saika (OS) method is one of the most widely used techniques in quantum chemistry for evaluating electron repulsion integrals (ERIs) via a set of recurrence relations that build higher angular momentum integrals from lower-order ones. The original derivation by Obara and Saika proceeded by directly relating integrals of differing angular momentum. In this work, we present a compact novel derivation of the OS vertical recurrence relation based solely on differential relations between Gaussian basis functions, expanding on a method suggested in earlier work. By explicitly deriving the required derivative expressions we identify all non-zero primitive terms contributing to the full ERI to develop a hierarchical formulation of the OS recursion relations. This approach has pedagogical value as a rigorous and self-contained derivation. Additionally, the resulting organization exposes independent primitive derivative quantities and may be useful for code generation and parallel implementations on modern GPU architectures.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.00102,
title = {A differential derivation of the Obara-Saika relation for Gaussian electron repulsion integrals},
author = {Charles C. Forgy and David A. Mazziotti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.00102},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
21 pages, no figures