Auxiliary basis sets for main row atoms and transition metals and their use to approximate Coulomb potentials

We present auxilliary basis sets for the atoms H to At – excluding the Lanthanides – optimized for an efficient treatment of molecular electronic Coulomb interactions. For atoms beyond Kr our approach is based on effective core potentials to describe core electrons. The approximate representation of the electron density in terms of the auxilliary basis has virtually no effect on computed structures and affects the energy by less than 10⁻⁴ a.u. per atom. Efficiency is demonstrated in applications for molecules with up to 300 atoms and 2500 basis functions. Received: 17 December 1996 / Accepted: 8 May 1997