Analysis and Optimization of Resonance Energies and Widths Using Complex Absorbing Potentials

Complex absorbing potentials (CAPs) are artificial potentials added to electronic Hamiltonians to make the wavefunction of metastable electronic states square-integrable. This makes the electronic structure problem of electronic resonances comparable to that of electronic bound states, thus reducing the complexity of the problem. CAPs depend on two types of parameters: the coupling parameter $\eta$ and a set of spatial parameters which define the onset of the CAP. It has been a common practice over the years to minimize the CAP perturbation on the physical electronic Hamiltonian by running an $\eta-$trajectory, whereby one fixes the spatial parameters and varies $\eta$. The optimal $\eta$ is chosen according to the minimum log-velocity criterion. But the effectiveness of an $\eta-$trajectory strongly depends on the values of the fixed spatial parameters. In this work, we propose a more general criterion, called the $\xi-$criterion, which allows one to minimize any CAP parameter, including the CAP spatial parameters. Indeed, we show that fixing $\eta$ and varying the spatial parameters according to a scheme (i.e., running a spatial trajectory) is a more efficient and reliable way of minimizing the CAP perturbations (which is assessed using the $\xi-$criterion). We illustrate the method by determining the resonance energy and width of the temporary anion of dinitrogen, at the Hartree-Fock and EOM-EA-CCSD levels, using two different types of CAPs: the box- and the smooth Voronoi-CAPs.