ORCA is a general-purpose quantum chemistry program package that features virtually all modern electronic structure methods (density functional theory, many-body perturbation and coupled cluster theories, and multireference and semiempirical methods). It is designed with the aim of generality, extendibility, efficiency, and user friendliness. Its main field of application is larger molecules, transition metal complexes, and their spectroscopic properties. ORCA uses standard Gaussian basis functions and is fully parallelized. The article provides an overview of its current possibilities and documents its efficiency. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The ORCA program system

This short update provides an overview of the capabilities that have been added to the ORCA electronic structure package (version 4.0) since publication of the first article in 2012. WIREs Comput Mol Sci 2018, 8:e1327. doi: 10.1002/wcms.1327

This article is categorized under: 

Electronic Structure Theory > Ab Initio Electronic Structure Methods
Electronic Structure Theory > Density Functional Theory
Software > Quantum Chemistry

Software update: the ORCA program system, version 4.0

: The unpolarized absorption and circular dichroism spectra of the fundamental vibrational transitions of the chiral molecule, 4-methyl-2-oxetanone, are calculated ab initio. Harmonic force fields are obtained using Density Functional Theory (DFT), MP2, and SCF methodologies and a 5S4P2D/3S2P (TZ2P) basis set. DFT calculations use the Local Spin Density Approximation (LSDA), BLYP, and Becke3LYP (B3LYP) density functionals. Mid-IR spectra predicted using LSDA, BLYP, and B3LYP force fields are of significantly different quality, the B3LYP force field yielding spectra in clearly superior, and overall excellent, agreement with experiment. The MP2 force field yields spectra in slightly worse agreement with experiment than the B3LYP force field. The SCF force field yields spectra in poor agreement with experiment.The basis set dependence of B3LYP force fields is also explored: the 6-31G* and TZ2P basis sets give very similar results while the 3-21G basis set yields spectra in substantially worse agreements with experiment. jg

Ab initio calculation of vibrational absorption and circular dichroism spectra using density functional force fields

In this contribution to the special software-centered issue, the ORCA program package is described. We start with a short historical perspective of how the project began and go on to discuss its current feature set. ORCA has grown into a rather comprehensive general-purpose package for theoretical research in all areas of chemistry and many neighboring disciplines such as materials sciences and biochemistry. ORCA features density functional theory, a range of wavefunction based correlation methods, semi-empirical methods, and even force-field methods. A range of solvation and embedding models is featured as well as a complete intrinsic to ORCA quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics engine. A specialty of ORCA always has been a focus on transition metals and spectroscopy as well as a focus on applicability of the implemented methods to "real-life" chemical applications involving systems with a few hundred atoms. In addition to being efficient, user friendly, and, to the largest extent possible, platform independent, ORCA features a number of methods that are either unique to ORCA or have been first implemented in the course of the ORCA development. Next to a range of spectroscopic and magnetic properties, the linear- or low-order single- and multi-reference local correlation methods based on pair natural orbitals (domain based local pair natural orbital methods) should be mentioned here. Consequently, ORCA is a widely used program in various areas of chemistry and spectroscopy with a current user base of over 22 000 registered users in academic research and in industry.

The ORCA quantum chemistry program package

NAMDis a molecular dynamics program designed for high-performance simulations of very large biological objects on CPU- and GPU-based architectures. NAMD offers scalable performance on petascale parallel supercomputers consisting of hundreds of thousands of cores, as well as on inexpensive commodity clusters commonly found in academic environments. It is written in C++ and leans on Charm++ parallel objects for optimal performance on low-latency architectures. NAMD is a versatile, multipurpose code that gathers state-of-the-art algorithms to carry out simulations in apt thermodynamic ensembles, using the widely popular CHARMM, AMBER, OPLS, and GROMOS biomolecular force fields. Here, we review the main features of NAMD that allow both equilibrium and enhanced-sampling molecular dynamics simulations with numerical efficiency. We describe the underlying concepts utilized by NAMD and their implementation, most notably for handling long-range electrostatics; controlling the temperature, pressure, and pH; applying external potentials on tailored grids; leveraging massively parallel resources in multiple-copy simulations; and hybrid quantum-mechanical/molecular-mechanical descriptions. We detail the variety of options offered by NAMD for enhanced-sampling simulations aimed at determining free-energy differences of either alchemical or geometrical transformations and outline their applicability to specific problems. Last, we discuss the roadmap for the development of NAMD and our current efforts toward achieving optimal performance on GPU-based architectures, for pushing back the limitations that have prevented biologically realistic billion-atom objects to be fruitfully simulated, and for making large-scale simulations less expensive and easier to set up, run, and analyze. NAMD is distributed free of charge with its source code at www.ks.uiuc.edu.

Scalable molecular dynamics on CPU and GPU architectures with NAMD.

Efficient, approximate and parallel Hartree–Fock and hybrid DFT calculations. A ‘chain-of-spheres’ algorithm for the Hartree–Fock exchange

Coupled-electron pair approximations (CEPAs) and coupled-pair functionals (CPFs) have been popular in the 1970s and 1980s and have yielded excellent results for small molecules. Recently, interest in CEPA and CPF methods has been renewed. It has been shown that these methods lead to competitive thermochemical, kinetic, and structural predictions. They greatly surpass second order Moller–Plesset and popular density functional theory based approaches in accuracy and are intermediate in quality between CCSD and CCSD(T) in extended benchmark studies. In this work an efficient production level implementation of the closed shell CEPA and CPF methods is reported that can be applied to medium sized molecules in the range of 50–100 atoms and up to about 2000 basis functions. The internal space is spanned by localized internal orbitals. The external space is greatly compressed through the method of pair natural orbitals (PNOs) that was also introduced by the pioneers of the CEPA approaches. Our implementation also ...

Efficient and accurate local approximations to coupled-electron pair approaches: An attempt to revive the pair natural orbital method

Quantum chemistry has found its way into the everyday work of many experimental chemists. Calculations can predict the outcome of chemical reactions, afford insight into reaction mechanisms, and be used to interpret structure and bonding in molecules. Thus, contemporary theory offers tremendous opportunities in experimental chemical research. However, even with present-day computers and algorithms, we cannot solve the many particle Schrodinger equation exactly; inevitably some error is introduced in approximating the solutions of this equation. Thus, the accuracy of quantum chemical calculations is of critical importance. The affordable accuracy depends on molecular size and particularly on the total number of atoms: for orientation, ethanol has 9 atoms, aspirin 21 atoms, morphine 40 atoms, sildenafil 63 atoms, paclitaxel 113 atoms, insulin nearly 800 atoms, and quaternary hemoglobin almost 12,000 atoms. Currently, molecules with up to ∼10 atoms can be very accurately studied by coupled cluster (CC) theor...

Frank Wennmohs

Papers

Efficient, approximate and parallel Hartree–Fock and hybrid DFT calculations. A ‘chain-of-spheres’ algorithm for the Hartree–Fock exchange

Efficient and accurate local approximations to coupled-electron pair approaches: An attempt to revive the pair natural orbital method

Accurate theoretical chemistry with coupled pair models.

Theoretical bioinorganic chemistry : the electronic structure makes a difference

A comparative study of single reference correlation methods of the coupled-pair type